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THE  BEDELL  LECTURES 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
in  2019  with  funding  from 
Princeton  Theological  Seminary  Library 


https://archive.org/details/worldlogosOOthom 


BEDELL  LECTURES  on  the  Evidences 
of  Religion. 

I.  The  World’s  Testimony  to  Jesus  Christ  ; 

or,  The  Power  of  Christianity  in  Developing 
Modern  Civilization.  By  the  Rt.  Rev.  John 
Williams,  D.D.,  Bishop  of  Connecticut.  Svo,  cloth 
extra  .......  $1.00 

“Contains  more  than  can  often  be  found  in  ten 
times  the  space  .  .  .  An  historical  argument, 

so  clear  and  so  powerful  that  nothing  beyond  the 
stating  of  it  is  needed.” — The  Churchman . 

“The  argument  is  massive  and  simple.” — Stand¬ 
ard  of  the  Cross. 

II.  Revealed  Religion  Expounded  by  its 

Relations  to  the  Moral  Being  of  God.  By 
the  Rt.  Rev.  Henry  Cotterill,  D.D.,  Bishop  of 
Edinburgh.  Svo,  cloth  extra  .  .  .  $1.00 

“Dr.  Cotterill  is  a  profound  theologian,  a  ripe 
scholar,  and  an  eminent  preacher.  His  lecture  con¬ 
denses  the  highest  results  of  ancient  and  modern 
thought  on  the  subject,  and  is  the  best  argument 
possible  against  the  spirit  of  unbelief  which  is  so 
rapidly  spreading  over  the  Christian  world.” — Com¬ 
mercial  Advertiser. 

III.  The  World  and  the  Logos.  By  the  Rt. 
Rev.  Hugh  Miller  Thompson,  D.D.,  Asst.  Bishop 
of  Mississippi.  8vo,  cloth  .  .  .  $1.00 


G.  P.  PUTNAM’S  SONS,  Publishers,  New  York. 


THE  BEDELL  LECTURES,  1885 


THE 

World  and  the  Logos 


HUGH  MILLER  THOMPSON,  S.T.D.,  LL.D. 

Assistant  Bishop  of  Mississippi 


NEW  YORK  &  LONDON 

G.  P.  PUTNAM’S  SONS 


^nicKerbocktr  |)rtss 
1 886 


COPYRIGHT  BY 

G.  P.  PUTNAM’S  SONS 
1886 


Press  of 

G.  P.  Putnam’s  Sons 
New  York 


EXTRACTS 


From  the  communication  of  the  donors  to  the 
Board  of  Trustees  of  the  Theological  Semi¬ 
nary  of  the  Diocese  of  Ohio  and  Kenyon  Col¬ 
lege. 

Cleveland,  June  21,  1880. 

Gentlemen: 

We  have  consecrated  and  set  apart  for  the  service 
of  God  the  sum  of  $5,000,  to  be  devoted  to  the  estab¬ 
lishment  of  a  lecture  or  lectures  in  the  Institutions 
at  Gambier  on  the  Evidences  of  Natural  and  Re¬ 
vealed  Religion;  or  the  Relations  of  Science  and 
Religion. 

We  ask  permission  of  the  Trustees  to  establish  the 
lecture  immediately,  with  the  following  provisions: 

The  lecture  or  lectures  shall  be  delivered  bien¬ 
nially  on  Founders’  Day  (if  such  a  day  shall  be 
established),  or  other  appropriate  time.  During  our 
lifetime,  or  the  lifetime  of  either  of  us,  the  nomination 
of  the  lectureship  shall  rest  with  us. 

The  interest  for  two  years  on  the  fund,  less  the  sum 
necessary  to  pay  for  the  publication,  shall  be  paid  to 
the  Lecturer. 

The  Lecturer  shall  also  have  one  half  of  the  net 
profits  of  the  publication  during  the  first  two  years 
after  the  date  of  publication.  All  other  profits  shall 


EXTRACTS. 


be  the  property  of  the  Board,  and  shall  be  added  to 
the  capital  of  the  lectureship. 

We  express  our  preference  that  the  lecture  or 
lectures  shall  be  delivered  in  the  Church  of  the 
Holy  Spirit,  if  such  building  be  in  existence;  and  shall 
be  delivered  in  the  presence  of  all  the  members  of 
the  Institutions  under  the  authority  of  the  Board. 

We  ask  that  the  day  on  which  the  lecture  or  the 
first  of  each  series  of  lectures  shall  be  delivered,  shall 
be  declared  a  holiday. 

We  wish  that  the  nomination  to  this  lectureship 
shall  be  restricted  by  no  other  consideration  than  the 
ability  of  the  appointee  to  discharge  the  duty  to  the 
highest  glory  of  God  in  the  completest  presentation 
of  the  subject.  We  desire  that  the  lectures  shall  be 
published  in  uniform  shape,  and  that  a  copy  of  each 
shall  be  placed  in  the  libraries  of  Bexley  Hall,  Ken¬ 
yon  College  and  of  the  Philomethesian  and  the  Nu 
Pi  Kappa  Society.  Asking  the  favorable  consider¬ 
ation  of  the  Board  of  Trustees, 

We  remain  with  great  respect, 

G.  T.  Bedell, 
Julia  Bedell. 

The  Board  accepted  the  gift,  approved  the 
terms,  named  All  Saints’  Day,  November  the 
first,  as  Founders’  Day,  and  made  it  a  holi¬ 
day. 


LECTURE  FIRST. 

“  IN  THE  BEGINNING  WAS  THE  WORD.” 

St.  John’s  Gospel,  i.,  i. 

The  New  Testament,  like  the  Old,  begins 
with  beginnings.  Both,  also,  begin  with  Rea¬ 
son .T  Each  introduces  us  into  an  ordered 
universe — a  kosmos,  forming  or  formed  out 
of  a  chaos.  In  each,  also,  this  kosmos  is 
crowned,  as  by  the  highest  creative  activity  of 
the  Eternal  Logos,  by  a  rational  being,  a  finite 
Logos,  breathed  out  from  the  Infinite  One, 
and  made  in  the  image  and  the  likeness  of 
that. 

And  for  this  finite  Logos  all  the  kosmos 
exists.  He  is,  in  a  sense,  its  lord,  the  viceroy 
over  it,  and  has  it  in  charge  to  render  it  more 

1  Whatever  we  may  conclude  with  regard  to  the  Mosaic  account  of 
creation,  so-called,  this  is  to  be  said  for  it  :  that  it  is  plain,  coherent, 
logical  in  itself,  accounting  for  all  the  facts, — and  that,  so  far,  it  is 
the  only  cosmogony  of  which  this  can  be  said. 

The  mythical  cosmogonies  of  India  or  Scandinavia,  with  their  sup¬ 
porting  Tortoises  or  Life-Trees,  are  clearly  poetical  escapes  from 
difficulties.  The  doctrine  of  evolution,  so-called,  does  not  deal  with 
the  question  of  creation  at  all — dodges,  that  is,  all  the  difficulties. 


I 


2 


BEDELL  LECTURES. 


orderly,  more  cosmical,  more  rational  during 
its  continuance. 

There  are  voices  called  scientific,  which  deny 
all  this  and  more.  How  profoundly  contra¬ 
dictory  to  the  utterance  of  St.  John  in  the 
fourth  gospel,  these  voices  are,  few  have  per¬ 
haps  considered.  That  science  is  opposed  in 
some  way  to  the  first  chapter  of  Genesis,  is 
more  or  less  clear  in  the  minds  of  intelligent 
believers.  But  that  it  is,  in  its  latest  reaches, 
opposed  quite  as  irreconcilably,  and  on  pro¬ 
founder  philosophy,  to  the  Gospel  of  St.  John, 
is  not  so  commonly  understood. 

For  in  this  first  chapter  there  is  a  method  of 
creation  stated,  and  a  philosophy  of  creation  as 
well. 

The  philosophy  is  this  :  Eternal  Reason 
existed  antecedent  to  all  else.  This  Eternal 
Reason  was  with  God,  was  God,  and  created  all 
things.  In  this  Reason  was  life,  independent 
existence,  and  light,  all  illumination  material 
and  immaterial,  and  the  Eternal  Reason  made 
a  reasonable,  rational  world,  a  kosmos. 

The  purpose  of  this  making  was  so  definite, 
had  so  clear  an  end  and  meaning,  that  to  carry 
it  out  fully  when  due  time  came,  the  Eternal 
Reason  put  Himself  under  the  conditions  of 


HUGH  MILLER  THOMPSON. 


3 


humanity,  which  He  had  made  in  His  own 
image  :  “  The  Word  became  flesh  and  tented2 
among  us.” 

Now  the  latest  voices  of  science  join  issue 
with  all  this.  They  declare  that  there  are  no 
beginnings,  that  beginnings  are  “  unthinkable.” 
They  tell  us  that  nothing  was  made,  that  all 
things  have  just  grown.  They  insist  that 
there  was  no  reason  in  the  making,  and  that 
there  is  no  reason  in  the  continuance,  that 
there  is  no  purpose  anywhere,  no  end  for 
which  any  thing  exists,  and  that  a  purposeless 
world  glimmers  upon  its  little  road  for  a  few 
years,  more  or  less,  with  its  little  population 
of  insects  and  fishes,  birds  and  reptiles,  worms 
and  men,  till  it  swings  back  into  the  fire-mist 
and  weltering  chaos  out  of  which  it  was  once 
shot,  red-hot,  by  some  accident,  some  where, 
and  at  some  time,  of  which  when  and  where 
we  are  and  must  be  entirely  ignorant.3 

2  e(dktjvgo6ey. 

3  Evolution  necessarily  begins  with  something  already  existing.  It 
leaves  the  question  of  creation  and  its  purposes  untouched  as  insolu¬ 
ble.  In  the  philosophy  of  Mr.  Spencer,  matter  is  self-existent,  and 
the  universe,  or  parts  of  it,  vibrate  forth  from  the  fire-mist  of  the 
supposed  nebulae  into  plants,  animals,  men,  governments,  religions, 
and  philosophies,  and  then  back  into  fire-mist  again.  Mr.  S.  says  : 
“The  absolute  commencement  (Anglice,  beginning)  of  organic  life  on 
the  globe  I  distinctly  deny.  The  affirmation  of  universal  evolution  is, 
in  itself,  the  negative  of  an  absolute  commencement  of  any  thing.” 


4 


BEDELL  LECTURES. 


Between  these  two  conceptions  of  the  world’s 
cause  and  meaning  no  reconciliation  is  possi¬ 
ble.  I  want  you  to  understand  this  at  the 
threshold. 

There  is  a  vague  idea  that  “science,”  as  it  is 
called,  is  opposed  to  religion,  that  it  has  en¬ 
dangered  our  faith,  and  that  religion  needs  to 
be  reconciled  with  it.  There  is  a  notion  com¬ 
mon,  too,  that  the  reconciliation  is  possible, 
that  we  only  need  to  find  some  new  explana¬ 
tion  for  some  chapters  in  Genesis,  make  some 
trifling  changes  of  readings  in  our  Bibles,  and 
a  reconciliation  between  science  and  religion 
will  follow. 

To  effect  this  desirable  end  many  simple- 
minded  and  honest  men  are  at  work  on  both 
sides,  with  various  results. 

But  let  us  understand  at  the  beginning,  that 
what  arrogates  for  itself  to-day  the  name  of 
science  as  its  special  own — the  theory  of  evo¬ 
lution,  namely,  and,  in  biology,  the  theory  of 
descent — prides  itself  on  a  denial  of  any  begin¬ 
nings,  a  denial  of  any  rational  continuance  or 
intelligent  purpose,  a  denial  of  any  making, 
and  a  denial  of  any  intended  end. 

It  is  not  a  dealing  with  the  Mosaic  account 
of  the  creation.  It  is  a  theory  which  denies  all 


HUGH  MILLER  THOMPSON . 


5 


creation  and  compels  you  to  assert  that  there 
is  not,  and  never  was,  a  Logos  at  all,  and  that 
Jesus  Christ  was,  like  all  other  men  as  well  as 
all  organized  things,  an  outcome  of  Bathybi- 
an  slime  !  Across  the  iron  working  of  me¬ 
chanic  fatalism  can  come  no  reason,  either  of 
God  or  men,  either  finite  or  infinite.  One  act 
of  self-centred  will,  one  stroke  of  resolute  self¬ 
organizing  purpose  would  annihilate  the  entire 
philosophy  of  evolution,  as  the  discovery  of  a 
star  whose  motion  is  upon  right  angles,  would 
destroy  the  Newtonian  theory. 

That  science  and  revealed  religion  are  not 
antagonistic,  we  are  fond  here  of  believing. 
That  seeming  contentions  can  be  reconciled, 
we  feel  certain.  But  let  us  understand  what 
we  say.  Here,  as  in  so  many  cases,  we  need 
definitions. 

If  by  science  we  mean  theories  based,  not 
on  demonstration,  but  on  assumptions  made  a 
priori ,  on  inferences,  not  from  facts,  but  from 
words  and  formulas  ;  if,  in  short,  we  allow  a 
metaphysics  to  be  imposed  upon  us  as  natural 
science,  we  shall  find  the  reconciliation  impos¬ 
sible,  and  useless,  if  it  were  not  impossible. 

Let  us  define  science.  If  we  understand  by 
science  ordered  human  knowledge,  we  shall 
not  be  far  wrong. 


6 


BEDELL  LECTURES. 


In  science,  therefore,  are  two  things  :  the 
facts,  and  the  ordering  of  the  facts. 

There  is  a  possibility  of  error  about  both. 

1.  The  fact  may  not  be  truly  ascertained. 

2.  The  inference  drawn  from  the  fact,  the 
meaning  we  find  in  it,  the  story  it  tells  us,  may 
be  mistaken/* 

The  collector  of  facts  exercises  one  set  of 
human  faculties.  The  organizer  of  the  facts 
into  their  place  in  a  logical  science,  exercises 
quite  another  and  a  higher.  The  first  needs, 
mainly,  quick,  correct  perceptions.  The  other 
requires  a  trained,  logical  intellect. 

Farther  still.  The  fact-collector  may  be  of 
the  highest  excellence  in  his  department,  and 

a  Sir  Charles  Lyell  (“Antiquity  of  Man”)  has  some  discussions 
upon  a  human  pelvic  bone,  found  in  Mississippi  mud  near  Natchez* 
and  on  a  human  skeleton  found  in  the  same  mud  near  New  Orleans, 
sixteen  feet  below  the  surface.  Dr.  Dowling,  a  New  Orleans  physi¬ 
cian  of  some  note,  assigned  to  this  skeleton,  from  calculations  of  the 
mud  deposit  of  the  Delta,  an  antiquity  of  50,000  years  ;  other  geolo¬ 
gists  give  it  100,000. 

Sir  Charles  gives  100,000  years  to  the  formation  of  the  Delta, 
from  a  calculation  of  the  annual  mud  deposit. 

During  this  autumn  (1885)  while  sinking  an  artesian  well  for  a  “  Cold 
Storage  Warehouse  ”  in  New  Orleans,  the  head  of  a  child's  china 
doll  was  brought  up  from  a  depth  of  tzventy-five  feet  below  the  sur¬ 
face  of  the  most  solid  ground,  on  which  heavy  buildings  stand  in  the 
city  of  New  Orleans  ( New  Orleans'  Picayune,  Sept.  18,  1885). 
What  has  been  said  of  medicine  may  be  said  of  other  sciences,  espe¬ 
cially  geology.  “  There  is  nothing  so  uncertain  as  scientific  theories, 
except  scientific  facts." 


HUGH  MILLER  THOMPSON . 


7 


quite  useless  in  the  logical  dealing  with  his 
discoveries.  And  the  intellect  best  trained 
and  fitted  to  see  the  meaning,  bearing,  and 
classification  of  facts  may  really  never  have 
discovered  one  ! 

There  can  be,  in  true  science,  also,  no 
authorities.  Names  in  science  have  no  weight. 
The  facts  themselves  are  sacred.  Being  genu¬ 
ine  facts,  no  denial,  no  ignorance,  no  sophistry 
touches  them.  But  the  uses  made  of  them  in 
any  theory,  the  conclusions  drawn  from  them, 
and  the  place,  in  any  system,  assigned  them, 
are  always  subject  to  revision  ;  because,  while 
the  fact  itself  is  infallible,  the  reasoning  about 
it  is  always  fallible,  and  often,  as  the  event  has 
shown,  very  fallible  and  blundering  indeed.4 

In  the  widest  sense  we  are  compelled  to  say 
that,  the  facts  set  aside,  science  has  in  it  that 
element  of  human  fallibility  which  makes  it 
quite  impossible  to  assert  that  any  of  its  con¬ 
clusions  may  not  require  re-examination. 

4  The  history  of  the  various  editions  of  Sir  Charles  Lyell’s  “  Prin¬ 
ciples  of  Geology  ”  is  a  striking  illustration.  The  amiable  naturalist 
with  precisely  the  same  facts  before  him,  through  eight  editions 
taught  the  permanency  of  species  and  the  doctrine  of  specific  crea¬ 
tion.  In  the  tenth,  without  a  solitary  new  fact,  he  proclaims  his 
adherence  to  the  theory  of  evolution.  The  change  was  subjective, 
and  accidentally  shows  a  man’s  responsibility  for  his  faith — how  en¬ 
tirely  his  scientific  faith  even  is  of  his  own  making. 


8 


BEDELL  LECTURES. 


It  is  no  presumption,  on  the  part  of  any 
thinking  man,  to  take  the  sceptical  position 
with  regard  to  even  the  best-established  con¬ 
clusion  of  science,  and  call  upon  it  again  to 
give  a  reason  for  its  existence. 

We  understand,  of  course,  that,  in  the  larger 
definition  of  science,  theories  must  come  in, 
working  hypotheses,  which  are  understood  to 
be  tentative,  although  assumed  for  the  time  as 
certain.  But  how  effectual  a  theory  may  be 
as  working  hypothesis,  and  how  absurdly  false 
in  fact,  is  shown  in  this,  that  the  Ptolemaic 
theory  served  for  ages  for  the  working  of  all 
problems  in  practical  astronomy.  But  a  “  work¬ 
ing  hypothesis  ”  is  not  a  part  of  science,  though 
it  may  explain  many  things,  and  help  in  the 
discovery  of  genuine  fact. 

From  what  I  have  said,  you  will  perceive 
that  I  decline  to  be  overawed  by  names  in 
science,  and  I  decline  also  to  accept  conclusions, 
derived  from  facts,  the  validity  of  which  de¬ 
pends  upon  the  correctness  of  human  reason, 
as  being  necessarily  infallible  or  not  amenable 
to  my  own  re-examination,  and  to  be  accepted 
or  rejected  by  my  own  judgment. 

And  just  here  all  of  us  have  the  right,  and  I 
believe  it  is  our  duty,  to  protest  respectfully 


HUGH  MILLER  THOMPSON. 


9 


but  firmly  against  the  tone  assumed  by  some 
scientific  men.  That  tone  is  thoroughly  un¬ 
scientific,  dogmatic,  and  intolerant.  There  is, 
for  instance,  no  measure  to  the  contempt  and 
scorn  which  such  a  writer  as  the  German  Os¬ 
car  Schmidt  treats  those  who  hold  to  the  doc¬ 
trine  of  design,  who  claim  to  see  any  purpose 
or  meaning  in  any  thing  whatever  in  the 
universe.5 

Such  a  temper  unfits  a  man  for  scientific  dis¬ 
cussion,  and  its  manifestation  puts  him  outside 
the  bounds  of  that  comity  which  is  the  law  be¬ 
tween  thinking  and  serious  men. 

And  yet,  though  this  writer  is  peculiarly  of¬ 
fensive,  he  only  goes  a  little  beyond  what  is 
the  common  attitude  of  many  '‘scientific” 
men,  so-called,  towards  believers  in  God,  and 
especially  believers  in  revelation.  Dogma¬ 
tism,  intolerance  of  contradiction,  assertion  to 
be  taken  without  reasoning,  sneers  at  religion 
and  religious  ideas  as  blindness,  childishness, 
and  superstition,  the  assumption  that  a  Chris¬ 
tian  believer  cannot  understand  science,  and  is 
ruled  out  of  scientific  discussion, — all  this  is  il¬ 
lustrated  in  the  writings  of  men  of  a  certain 
school,  too  commonly  to  need  citations  here  in 


6  “  The  Doctrine  of  Descent,  and  Darwinism,”  by  Oscar  Schmidt. 


IO 


BEDELL  LECTURES. 


proof,  and  this,  in  the  face  of  that  bede-roll  of 
splendid  names  which  have  adorned  science 
and  religion  equally. 

We  owe  it  to  ourselves  to  resent  this  un¬ 
scientific  and  even  insulting  attitude. 

No  attainments  in  science  make  a  man  in¬ 
fallible.  No  name,  in  that  field  at  least,  is 
sacred.  No  work  done  within  it  but  lies  open 
to  the  cold  irreverent  criticism,  and  the  passion¬ 
less  judgment,  of  any  man  who  insists  on  doing 
his  own  thinking  and  is  competent  to  the 
doing  it. 

Because  “  I  believe  in  God  the  Father  Al¬ 
mighty,  Maker  of  heaven  and  earth,  and  of  all 
things  visible  and  invisible,”  I  shall  not  allow 
myself  to  be  warned  off  the  study  of  that  Fath¬ 
er’s  works  and  worlds,  because  some  modern 
scientist  has  concluded,  since  he  finds  not  that 
Maker  in  his  crucible  nor  under  his  microscope, 
that  therefore  there  is  no  Maker  at  all,  or,  if 
there  be,  that,  as  Mr.  Spencer  majestically  in¬ 
forms  me,  nobody  can  know  any  thing  about 
Him. 

One  is  tempted  to  put  together  just  here 
the  names  of  the  scientific  thinkers,  beginning 
with  Bacon,  who  have  been  and  are  Christians, 
and  the  names  of  those  who  hold  that  the 


HUGH  MILLER  THOMPSON.  I 1 

world  has  no  maker,  and  ask  the  latter  if  they 
rule  Bacon  and  Newton  out. 

One,  at  all  events,  can  well  afford  to  sit  in 
their  unscientific  and  superstitious  company. 
But  I  have  set  myself  to  call  no  man  Rabbi 
here,  and  to  bring  no  authority  from  a  name. 

There  is  nothing  in  the  history  of  science, 
considering  its  theories  and  hypotheses  as  a 
part  of  science,  which  entitles  it  to  stand  upon 
the  certainty  of  any  theory  of  to-day. 

When  one  considers  the  theories  that  have 
perished  in  chemistry,  until  the  new  chemistry, 
with  the  hypothesis  of  unitary  structure,  has 
seated  itself  amid  the  ruins  of  the  old ;  in 
geology,  from  the  theories  of  the  Plutonists 
and  Neptunists  to  the  evolutionary, — a  man 
like  Sir  Charles  Lyell  going  through  them  all 
in  his  own  lifetime,  and  the  successive  editions 
of  one  book  ;  in  biology,  the  corpuscular,  the 
fluid,  the  chemical  theories,  and  now  the  con¬ 
tending  material  and  psychical  ;  the  emission 
and  undulatory  theories  of  light,  the  vortices 
of  Descartes,  and  the  attraction  of  Newton  ; 
the  Ptolemaic  “cycles and  epicycles,  orb  in  orb,” 
and  the  Copernican  central  sun  in  astronomy ; 
the  phlogistic,  caloric,  and  molecular  theories 
of  heat  ;  in  view,  in  short,  of  explanatory 


12 


BEDELL  LECTURES. 


theories  painfully  wrought  out,  painfully  de¬ 
fended,  universally  accepted  as  sufficient,  and 
universally  exploded  at  last,  he  is  a  very  rash 
man  who  will  dare  to  assert  that  any  existing 
theory  is  a  finality,  and  a  very  irrational  and 
impertinent  man  who,  assuming  its  infallibility, 
will  insist  that  I  must  deny  the  existence  of 
God,  because  his  personal  scientific  theory 
does  not  need  a  God  ! 

But  if  one  goes  behind  the  theory,  be  it 
what  it  may,  to  the  very  facts  on  which  the 
theory  is  supposed  to  be  founded,  he  finds 
himself  in  a  mist  of  uncertainty.  This  Pro¬ 
teus  matter,  with  which  natural  science  deals, 
and  which  alone,  some  wise  men  say,  is  worth 
our  study,  is  not  to  be  measured,  weighed, 
seen,  nor  bounded.  It  forever  eludes  us.  We 
have  no  instruments  to  gauge  it.  There  is  no 
absolute  measure  or  weight  in  nature.  There 
is  a  variable  in  all  our  calculations.  Never 
yet  had  we  an  exact  pound,  an  exact  foot,  or 
yard  ;  and  no  man,  with  most  perfect  instru¬ 
ments,  ever  drew  an  exact  circle,  or  an  exact 
square.  Keplers  laws  are  ideal,  not  actual. 
Newton’s  calculations  are  true  in  the  heavens 
of  the  intellect,  and  not  in  the  heavens  of  our 
stars.  There  is  no  perfect  ellipse,  no  exact 


HUGH  MILLER  THOMPSON. 


13 


orbit,  no  equal  movements  among  the  stars  in 
their  courses. 

On  matter  everywhere,  and  all  its  doings,  is 
the  stamp  of  uncertainty,  and  an  allowance  for 
error  must  come  into  every  experiment,  and 
be  admitted  in  our  best  tested  and  most 
assured  fact.  No  man  knows,  better  than  the 
scientific  man,  the  element  of  error  which 
underlies  our  most  careful  and  conscientious 
dealing  with  matter.  It  plays  us  tricks  con¬ 
tinually,  and  at  last  modern  science,  in  despair 
of  it,  has  relegated  it,  under  the  name  of  atom, 
(if  it  really  admit  of  existence  at  all),  into  the 
infinite  dark  of  blank  agnosticism,  where  no 
sense  can  test  it,  no  microscope  detect  it,  but 
where,  at  all  events,  it  has  the  certainty  of  an 
ideal. 

For,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  when  it  comes  to  the 
last  issue,  the  only  real  things,  the  only  true 
and  abiding  things,  the  only  measurable  and 
weighable  things,  are  things  ideal. 

The  mathematical  line  of  Euclid  is  straight. 
No  line  drawn  by  man  ever  was.  Euclid’s 
point  existed  and  forever  exists,  but  only  in 
the  thought  of  the  thinker.  The  line,  the 
point,  the  angle  are  abiding  and  eternal,  for 
they  belong  to  thought.  But  we  must  tell  our 


14 


BEDELL  LECTURES. 


naturalists  they  cannot  play  fast  and  loose 
with  us  in  this  business  of  atoms.  One  in¬ 
genious  scientist6  has  told  us,  to  explain  how 
small  they  are,  that  if  a  drop  of  water  were 
made  as  large  as  the  earth,  the  atoms  compos¬ 
ing  it  would  be  larger  than  marbles,  but  not 
quite  as  large  as  cricket-balls  !  And  these 
atoms  are  the  ultimate  and  indivisible.  We 
must  really  recall  our  atomistic  friends  to 
clear  thinking.  Just  as  long  as  the  atom  can 
be  conceived  at  all,  whether  as  ‘‘marbles”  or 
“  cricket-balls,”  it  must  be  conceived  capable 
of  division  into  halves,  quarters,  or  any  num¬ 
ber  of  fractions.  Just  as  long  as  the  atom  is 
that  protean  thing,  matter,  at  all,  just  so  long 
will  it  play  them  the  tricks  of  matter. 

They  must  put  the  atom,  as  the  last  result, 
into  the  realm  of  the  ideal, — a  thing  which  be¬ 
longs  to  the  pure  intellect ;  so  only  can  they  be 
certain  of  keeping  it  an  atom,  in  that  great 
day  when  a  drop  of  water  becomes  as  large  as 
a  world  ! 

But  why  should  I  dwell  upon  the  uncertain¬ 
ties  of  material  science,  when  its  latest  teachers 
themselves  are  uncertain  whether  matter  exists 
at  all,  when,  at  all  events,  even  granting  its 


6  Sir  William  Thompson. 


HUGH  MILLER  THOMPSON. 


15 


existence,  it  is  out  of  our  power  to  know  any 
thing  about  it  or  even  its  qualities  ;  for  are  we 
not  in  a  world  where  we  can  have  only  sensa¬ 
tions,  where  all  we  know  are  our  sensations, 
and  where,  at  best,  we  have  only  a  faint  sort  of 
right  to  infer  that  there  may  be  some  thing 
outside  answering  to  those  sensations  ? — a 
“  permanent  possibility  of  sensation  ”  at  best  ? 
Indeed,  in  the  elaboration  of  the  latest  think¬ 
ing  in  this  direction,  the  distinguished  author7 
seems  to  be  uncertain  whether  he  himself 
exists,  or  rather  is  quite  certain  he  does  not. 
The  only  thing  he  is  sure  of,  appears  to  be, 
that  “  the  Power  behind  phenomena  is  in¬ 
scrutable.” 

One  therefore  may  come,  I  think,  without 
any  restraining  awe,  certainly  without  any  con¬ 
ceited  presumption,  to  ask  again  of  a  theory 
that  leads  to  such  uncertain  results — whether 
it  is  absolutely  true,  and  covers  and  accounts 
for  all  the  facts,  so  that  the  world  just  made 
itself,  and  keeps  on  making  and  unmaking 
itself,  without  any  maker,  and  without  any 
reason  ?  For  this,  as  I  said  at  the  beginning  is 
what  now  claims  to  be  regarded  as  science : 
that  is,  that  something  which  is  known. 


7  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer. 


1 6  BEDELL  LECTURES . 

It  is  called  evolution  in  physics,  and  nat¬ 
ural  selection,  or  “  survival  of  the  fittest,”  in 
biology. 

Now  let  me  say  just  here  that  it  is  folly,  and 
worse,  to  speak  lightly  or  disrespectfully  of 
Mr.  Darwin,  the  keen,  careful  observer,  the 
delightful  reporter  of  discoveries,  the  amiable, 
kindly  gentleman.  That  Mr.  Spencer,  who 
is  the  author  of  a  philosophy  which  under¬ 
takes  to  explain  the  universe  by  evolution, 
and  who  has  formulated  a  series  of  “  laws  ”  by 
which  the  universe  makes  and  unmakes  itself, 
is  the  peer  of  any  man  living  for  abstruse 
thinking  and  metaphysic  speculation,  goes 
without  saying.  How  inconclusive  I  believe 
Mr.  Darwin’s  reasoning  from  his  facts,  how 
wide  the  gaps  he  leaves  unexplained,  how  gal¬ 
lantly  he  imagines  where  facts  fail  him,  and 
how  easily  he  gives  up  his  theory  in  later  edi¬ 
tions,  or  bolsters  it  with  new  inventions,  do 
not,  in  the  slightest,  lesson  my  admiration  for 
the  enthusiastic  student  of  orchids  and  pigeons, 
and  the  delightful  naturalist  of  the  Beagle. 
That  Mr.  Spencer  reasons  most  perversely, 
as  it  seems  to  me  ;  is  confused  and  confusing, 
invents  a  new  language,  and  gives  new  mean¬ 
ings  to  old  English  words  ;  that  his  conclusions 


HUGH  MILLER  THOMPSON. 


17 


are  irrational  and  sometimes  “  unthinkable  ” 
(to  use  a  word  of  his  own)  ;  that  he  deals 
freely  in  “  pseud-ideas,”  and  facts  which  are 
not  facts,  does  not  make  him  any  the  less  a 
man  of  great  ability,  honest,  and  honestly 
working,  according  to  his  lights,  at  explaining, 
after  his  fashion,  a  theory  of  the  universe 
which  he  is  trying  to  make  coherent,  and 
which  will  have  its  day,  and  pass  away  among 
other  equally  fantastic  theories  of  the  universe, 
which  have  faded  into  Prof.  Tyndall’s  “  infi¬ 
nite  azure  of  the  past.” 

We  have  no  disrespect  for  either  of  these 
gentlemen  when  we  decline  to  accept  their 
theories  as  science,  and  we  beg  to  say  that 
when  their  names  are  mentioned,  as  they 
sometimes  are,  as  if  that  should  end  all  dis¬ 
cussion,  our  awe  is  not  awakened  at  the  sound, 
nor  our  opinion  of  the  intellectual  capacity  of 
the  namers  greatly  elevated. 

The  question  simply  is,  Does  the  theory  of 
evolution  account  for  all  the  facts  ?  There  is 
not  a  man  among  you,  trained  to  any  clear 
logical  thinking,  who  is  not  as  capable  of  an¬ 
swering  that  question  as  either  of  these  gentle¬ 
men.  They  have  no  data  which  you  do  not 
possess.  The  dealing  with  the  data  is  just 


1 8  BEDELL  LECTURES. 

a  matter  of  sound  thinking — belongs  entirely 
to  the  realm  of  logic. 

But  what  is  the  theory  ?  Not  merely  evolu¬ 
tion.  In  an  evolution  in  nature  all  students  of 
nature  recognize  a  familiar  fact.  Every  sprout¬ 
ing  seed  reveals  it.  But  such  evolution  is  from 
the  potential  to  the  actual.  Every  acorn  is 
an  oak  in  germ.  The  evolution  is  by  a  fixed 
law  towards  a  fixed  end,  according  to  a  fixed 
purpose.  On  definite  lines  clearly  settled  by 
some  intelligence,  all  things  develop  or  evolve 
from  the  germ.  The  germ  contains  the  prod¬ 
uct  in  potency — contains  it  perhaps,  in  fact, 
had  we  eyes  to  see  it. 

Under  the  idea  that  this  is  what  is  meant  by 
evolution,  many  Christian  men  have  the  no¬ 
tion  that  they  may  be  evolutionists  and  Chris¬ 
tians  also.  If  God  made  the  world  a  living 
world,  a  seminarium  and  seed-bed  of  things,  in 
which  all  things  were  potentially  and  to  appear 
actually  in  their  time,  it  is  about  what  St.  Au¬ 
gustine  held,  and  a  goodly  catena  of  the  Schol¬ 
astics,  including  Aquinas.  If  this  were  the 
reconcilement  meant,  it  might  not  seem  hard 
to  reconcile  science  and  religion.  As  the  late 
Charles  Kingsley  put  it  :  “  We  knew  of  old 
that  God  was  so  wise  that  He  could  make  all 


HUGH  MILLER  THOMPSON. 


19 


things,  but  behold  He  is  so  much  wiser  than 
even  that,  that  He  can  make  all  things  make 
themselves.” 

But  the  doctrine  of  evolution,  as  “  science  ” 
puts  it  before  us,  is  another  thing  altogether. 
According  to  this,  which  now  calls  itself  sci¬ 
ence,  and  is  so  understood  as  an  unassaila¬ 
ble,  determinate  conclusion  by  most  ignorant 
readers,  we  are  required  to  hold  that  there 
is  no  God  to  begin  with,  that  there  is  no  Rea¬ 
son  and  no  Will,  that  no  operation  in  nature 
has  any  intelligence  or  any  purpose,  that  all 
these  makings,  and  evolutions,  so-called,  and 
developments,  are  merely  the  surgings  and 
rhythmical  heavings  of  brute  matter  and  brute 
force,  signifying  nothing. 

The  human  eye,  while  being  far  from  per¬ 
fect,  is  yet  a  wonderful  and  admirable  instru¬ 
ment,  in  comparison  with  which  the  most  per¬ 
fect  telescope  or  microscope  is  a  poor  clumsy 
contrivance.  But  how  came  the  human  eye, 
and  for  what  purpose  was  it  intended  ?  You 
and  I  would  say,  the  eye  was  constructed  for 
the  purpose  of  seeing.  That  seems  to  be  the 
only  conclusion  for  sane  common-sense,  and 
the  healthy  action  of  non-crazy  human  think¬ 
ing.  But  the  system  which  insists  upon  itself 


20 


BEDELL  LECTURES. 


as  “  science, ”  which  demands  that  we  shall  ac¬ 
cept  more  wonders  than  all  the  miracles  of  all 
religions,  true  and  false,  ancient  or  modern, 
upon  the  word  of  one  Englishman,  tells  us 
no  !  The  eye  was  not  made  to  see  by  ! 
There  was  no  purpose  of  the  sort  governing 
its  development  !  Matter,  in  an  infinite  num¬ 
ber  of  trillions  of  years,  by  infinite  trillions  of 
happy  chances,  preserving  the  beneficial  varia¬ 
tions,  and  letting  the  unbeneficial  die,  gradu¬ 
ally  kept  on  developing,  not  knowing  what 
it  wanted,  having  no  sense  more  than  any 
lump  of  mud,  until  it  developed — never  mean¬ 
ing  to  do  so — the  eye  of  a  philosopher  or  the 
eye  of  an  eagle  ! 

I  might  be  willing  to  grant  Mr.  Darwin’s 
theory  as  sufficient  for  the  eye  of  a  philoso¬ 
pher,  if  his  theory  be  philosophy,  but  I  decline 
to  accept  it  for  the  eye  of  the  eagle.8 

I  have  not  misrepresented  nor  exaggerated. 
The  theory  of  evolution  which  insists  that  it  is 
“  science  ”  has  to  face,  among  other  things,  the 
question  of  the  eye.  It  is  not  by  any  means 
its  most  puzzling  question.  But  such  is  the 
way  it  meets  it  :  the  eye  was  not  made  for 

8  See  Mr.  Darwin’s  account  of  the  origin  of  the  eye,  “Origin  of 
Species,”  pp.  222,  226. 


HUGH  MILLER  THOMPSON. 


21 


the  purpose  of  seeing.  That  would  concede 
reason,  purpose,  a  brain,  and  sense  in  the 
making  of  the  world,  and  would  annihilate  the 
whole  “  science,”  which  requires  us  to  believe 
that  in  matter  alone  is  the  power,  potency,  and 
sufficiency  of  all  life  and  all  thought.9 

I  cannot  here  quote,  our  time  is  too  short. 
I  just  state  what  is  familiar  to  all  readers  of 
what  calls  itself  “  science,”  that  the  dogma 
taken  for  granted,  insisted  upon  as  needing 
no  proof,  offered  for  our  acceptance  as  the  first 
step  in  wisdom,  is  that  there  is  no  meaning,  no 
purpose,  no  aim,  and  no  end — in  short,  no  sense 
in  the  universe  !  The  whole  system  of  Mr. 
Spencer,  for  instance,  formally  drawn  out  and 
stated,  only  pretends,  in  its  long-winded  Greek 
compounds,  to  register  what  is.  For  myself  I 
do  not  believe,  of  course,  that  it  does  that,  nor 
anywhere  near  that.  But  its  foundation  prin¬ 
ciple  is  that ;  at  its  best,  that  is  all  it  can  do. 
It  is  precluded  from  undertaking  to  tell  us  the 
by  whom  and  the  why  !  undertakes  to  tell  us 
of  the  how  only,  and  blunders  and  stutters 
about  that,  because  it  fetters  its  movement 
with  the  two  balls  and  chains  of  its  slavery — 
there  is  no  who,  and  there  is  no  Why  ! 

9  Mr.  Darwin,  again  and  again,  admits  that  if  any  purpose  were 
discoverable — if,  for  instance,  even  flowers  were  intended  to  be  beau¬ 
tiful,  it  would  destroy  his  theory. 


22 


BEDELL  LECTURES . 


Let  us  clearly  understand  that  before  we  go 
one  step  farther.  The  thing  that  calls  itself 
“science,”  that  arrogates  that  magnificent 
name  in  our  day,  begins  with  the  magisterial 
assertion  that  the  how  alone  is  within  our 
power,  and  bounds  the  limit  of  our  thought. 
H  ow  the  thing  is,  it  is  “  scientific  ”  to  enquire. 
Who  made  it,  what  is  it,  and  why  it  is  what  it 
is,  we  are  told  are  illegitimate  questions.  It  is 
a  waste  of  time  to  ask  them.  They  lead  to  the 
inscrutable.  That  is  the  only  thing  certain. 

Now  with  the  utmost  required  and  becoming 
respect  for  Mr.  Spencer,  am  I  to  be  shut  up  to 
the  bounds  he  arbitrarily  assigns  to  human 
thinking  ?  The  very  questions  which  he  puts 
aside  as  impossible  and  senseless — the  “  from 
what  ”  and  the  “  why  ”  of  things — have  been 
the  central  questions  of  thinkers  (compared  to 
whom,  with  all  respect  to  him,  he  is  a  babe  in 
arms)  since  the  dawn  of  recorded  thought,  and 
are  the  central  and  main  questions  yet.  The 
how  is  the  question  of  the  artist,  the  arranger, 
the  tabulator,  the  “  scientist  ”  at  best ;  the 
“by  what  ”  and  the  “  for  what  ”  are  the  ques¬ 
tions  of  the  common  heart,  and  the  common 
sense,  and  the  common  need,  as  they  are  of  the 
deepest  philosophy. 


HUGH  MILLER  THOMPSON . 


23 


But  here  we  touch  a  very  strange  fact.  The 
system  of  evolution,  like  every  other  system 
of  philosophy,  is  an  attempt  to  explain  the 
rationale  of  things.  It  arises,  as  all  do,  from 
an  innate  and  ever-present  demand  of  the  in¬ 
tellect  for  reasons,  for  causes,  for  an  order. 
The  principle  of  causality  is  imperative  in 
human  thinking.  There  is  nothing  more  so. 
Consciously  or  unconsciously  it  is  at  work. 
The  boor’s  mind  asserts  it,  as  does  the  phil¬ 
osopher’s.  There  is  no  difference,  in  the  begin¬ 
ning,  between  them.  The  only  difference  is  in 
the  rationality  and  sense  of  the  conclusions 
reached.  The  crudest  human  thinking  turns 
to  the  universe  about  it,  and  to  itself  and  its 
life,  and  demands  a  whence,  a  why,  and  a  how. 
A  cause  for  an  effect.  The  constitution  of 
man  is  such  that  he  requires  a  reason  for 
things,  and  it  is  to  that  imperative  requirement 
that  he  owes  all  his  advancement  in  knowledge. 
It  is  the  parent  of  all  his  philosophies,  sciences, 
and  theologies.  The  apple  falls.  But  why 
does  it  fall  ?  Not  merely,  mark  you  how?  for 
the  answer  then  would  simply  register  a  pro¬ 
cess  without  satisfactory  reason.  But  why  ? 
by  what  cause,  and  for  what  purpose  ? 

And  here  is  the  great  and  fatal  lack  in  the 


24 


BEDELL  LECTURES . 


entire  system  of  evolution  as  a  philosophy.10 
In  England  alone,  possibly,  and  in  shop-keep¬ 
ing  England,  not  the  England  of  Bacon  or 
Shakespeare,  but  the  England  of  Cobden  and 
Bright,  could  such  a  system  have  ventured  to 
assume  the  name  of  philosophy.  True  or  false, 
it  is  a  mere  registering  of  the  how — the  man¬ 
ner  of  the  process.  It  scornfully  scouts  the 
idea  that  we  can  know  the  whence  or  the  why, 
the  cause  and  the  meaning.  There  is  that  sort 
of  shallow  practicality  about  it  which  belongs 
to  buyers  and  sellers,  to  the  men  of  cotton- 
mills  and  spinning-jennies,  and  a  farthing  bet¬ 
ter  on  a  bolt  of  calico  and  a  farthing  less  on  a 
cotton  bale,  to  whom  no  thinking  which  does  not 
think  out  profit  is  of  any  use. 

And  yet,  though  the  master  of  the  system 
tells  us  that  there  is  nothing  so  certain  as  that 
the  by  what  and  the  why  are  utterly  inscruta¬ 
ble,  and  the  pupils  tell  us  that  to  inquire  about 
them  is  a  childish  waste  of  time,  we  are  here 
met  by  the  curious  fact  (for  human  nature  is  a 

10  The  evolution  philosophy  is  like  the  philosophy  of  the  locomotive 
which  would  tabulate  the  revolution  of  the  wheels,  the  pressure  of 
the  steam,  the  consumption  of  the  coal,  the  number  of  pieces  in  the 
machinery,  while  resolutely  insisting  that  the  questions  “  Who  made 
it?”  and  “  What  was  it  made  for?”  are  quite  impractical — in  fact, 
“unthinkable.”  There  is  no  doubt  but  a  very  practical  knowledge 
— sufficient  to  run  the  engine — would  be  thus  acquired. 


HUGH  MILLER  THOMPSON. 


25 


persistent  affair,  and  cannot  be  choked  by- 
philosophers),  that  still  the  old  questions 
are  put ;  that  even  they  themselves,  whether 
or  no,  must  put  them ;  and  that  their  en¬ 
tire  philosophies  are  attempts  to  make  the 
universe  an  ordered  kosmos,  to  make  it 
respectably  sensible  and  rational  to  human 
thought. 

And  first  of  all,  if  the  philosophy  be  true  ; 
if,  by  the  blind  working  of  blind  force,  man 
and  man’s  brain  and  man’s  sense  and  reason 
come  out  of  slime  without  any  purpose  ;  if  in 
all  the  infinite  ages  past  there  was  no  sense 
and  no  aim,  but  only  an  infinite  set  of  chances  ; 
how  comes  it  that  this  senseless  and  purpose¬ 
less  power  evolves  a  being  who  turns  round 
and  demands  of  it  how  it  came  to  do  this, 
and  by  what  power  and  for  what  end  ?  How 
came  a  senseless  force  to  evolve  a  sensible 
man  ?  An  irrational  brute  movement  to  create 
a  reason  ?  A  thing  that  cannot  put  two  and  two 
together  to  evolve  a  creature  who  turns  round 
on  this  thing,  criticises  its  action,  blames  its 
processes,  demands  to  know  its  meaning, 
writes  “  First  Principles  ”  and  other  philo¬ 
sophic  books  about  it,  drags  it  bound  to  his 
bar  of  judgment,  and  when  its  workings  do 


26 


BEDELL  LECTURES. 


not  suit  him,  checks  or  upsets  those  workings 
at  his  will  ? 

For  you  understand,  of  course,  that  by  this 
philosophy  there  is  but  one  force  in  heaven 
above  or  earth  beneath  ;  that  it  is  the  same 
force  driving  on  to  mad  ruin  in  the  cyclone  of 
the  western  prairie,  and  in  the  mother’s  voice 
singing  her  babe  to  sleep  in  the  cottage  in  its 
path  ;  that  in  the  rotting  swamp  that  breeds 
the  pestilence,  where  foul  things  twist  and 
crawl,  and  the  heavy  air  bears  poisonous  death, 
the  force  is  just  the  same  as  that  which  weaves 
the  lofty  measures  of  “  The  Idyls  of  the 
King,”  or  writes  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer’s  “  First 
Principles,” — as  much  sense  and  purpose  in  it 
at  one  time  as  another. 

I  fail  to  see  how  the  rational  can  come  out 
of  the  irrational.  To  me  the  conception  is 
“  unthinkable  ” — an  utterly  “  pseud-idea,”  to 
use  pet  phrases.  I  simply  cannot  commit  the 
intellectual  suicide  which  requires  me  to  believe 
that  a  thing  like  the  eye  of  an  eagle  was  not 
made,  but  produced  through  trillions  of  years 
by  millions  of  happy  chances,  which  chanced 
to  survive,  and  that  it  was  not  intended  in  any 
of  those  millions  of  years  as  a  thing  to  see  by. 
I  must  decline  to  be  scolded  out  of  my  com¬ 
mon-sense  in  the  name  of  “  science.” 


HUGH  MILLER  THOMPSON . 


27 


If  I  find  a  piece  of  chipped  flint,  a  poor, 
clumsy  little  bit  of  stone  hacked  into  a  rude 
triangular  form,  there  is  not  a  living  scientist 
that  will  not  tell  me  “  that  was  made  by  a  man, 
a  rational  man,  and  it  had  a  final  end  ;  it  was 
meant  for  shooting  with.”  Yet  I  find  so  mar¬ 
vellous  a  structure  as  the  human  eye,  and  a 
great  scientist  has  a  great  intellect  so  twisted 
by  the  worship  of  his  “  idols  of  the  cave,” 
that  he  tells  me  it  was  never  made,  and  it 
certainly  was  not  evolved  for  the  purpose  of 
seeing  ! 

I  think  no  reflecting  man  can  fail  to  be 
struck  with  the  position  man  occupies  upon 
the  earth  in  regard  to  this  matter.  He  de¬ 
mands  that  the  world  shall  give  an  account  of 
itself — shall  be  a  sane  world.  By  his  mental 
constitution  he  is  compelled  to  believe  there  is 
a  cause  for  what  he  sees  and  a  purpose  in 
things.  The  world  is  not  a  mad-house. 
Things  go  by  rule.  And  on  that  conviction 
man  masters  the  world.  For,  when  he  finds 
things  unreasonable,  he  sets  to  work  rationaliz¬ 
ing  them.  He  dikes  in  the  river;  he  drains 
the  marsh  ;  he  fells  the  forest ;  he  walls  out 
the  sea.  He  blasts  the  hills  open  and  bursts 
his  way  into  the  mine.  He  removes  moun- 


28 


BEDELL  LECTURES. 


tains,  as  was  promised,  by  faith — faith  in  his 
own  sense,  and  in  the  world’s  sense  also.  He 
has  modified  the  face  of  the  earth  in  the  his¬ 
toric  period — that  is,  in  the  time  in  which  we 
know  any  thing  about  him,  or  the  world  either 
— more  than  all  blind  forces,  tides,  winds, 
earthquakes,  together.11 

Every  step  he  takes  is  based  upon  the 
conviction  that  there  is  sense  in  things  which 
will  answer  to  his  sense,  that  the  world  made 
by  a  Logos  will  respond  to  the  dealings  of  a 
Logos,  that  brains  somehow  fit  in  with  the 
management  of  the  world,  and  that  its  force, 
in  any  shape,  can  be  understood  by  brains, 
managed  and  even  mastered  by  brains. 

The  poets,  who  express  the  inmost  heart 
and  root  of  things,  by  that  insight  which  makes 
them  seers,  and  with  the  central  truth  which 
makes  them  teachers  and  sages,  have  never 
doubted  about  a  world  with  sense,  a  world 
made  for  something,  good  for  something. 

In  every  drama  of  Shakespeare  the  scene  is 
in  a  world  where  the  laws  are  laws  with  a 
meaning  and  laws  with  an  end.  From  Sopho¬ 
cles  and  Euripides  to  Alfred  Tennyson,  the 

11  See  “  The  Earth  as  Modified  by  Human  Action,”  by  George 
P.  Marsh. 


HUGH  MILLER  THOMPSON. 


29 


poets,  like  the  real  philosophers,  do  not  fear 
to  tell  us  of  a  world  that  has  a  meaning. 

That  “  one  increasing  purpose  runs 
Through  all  the  circles  of  the  suns,” 

has  been  the  faith  of  all  the  intellectual  guides 
of  men.  The  mind  rejects  the  teachers  of 
blindness,  senselessness,  and  chaos  coming 
again. 

I  stand  in  amazement,  at  times,  before  the 
attitude  of  these  men,  who  demand  of  me 
intellectual  suicide  in  this  matter  of  final 
causes.  Such  a  man  as  Sir  Henry  Thompson, 
for  instance,  is  so  paralyzed  by  the  temporary 
scientific  fashion,  so  stands  in  awe  of  a  form 
of  words,  that  he  feels  compelled  to  apologize, 
because,  in  a  late  article,  he  ventures  to 
suggest  that  the  decay  of  the  teeth  in  old  age 
might  signify  that  the  old  man  need  not  eat  so 
much  beef  and  mutton  as  formerly  ! 

Here,  in  an  institution  of  liberal  learning,  I 
may  surely  plead  for  intellectual  liberty,  against 
the  fetters  of  a  system  which  would  impose 
itself  under  the  name  of  science  without  scien¬ 
tific  proof. 

Mr.  Darwin  finds  that  under  domestication 
and  the  care  of  men,  plants  and  animals,  pi- 


30 


BEDELL  LECTURES. 


geons  especially,  will  take  on  peculiar  forms. 
At  the  same  time  the  pigeons  are  always 
pigeons,  never  become  eagles,  nor  even  geese. 
Also,  as  soon  as  this  intelligent  oversight  is 
removed,  the  evidence  is,  that,  left  to  his  own 
devices,  all  the  peculiarities  will  disappear,  and 
tumbler  and  fantail  and  pouter  will  become 
rock  pigeons  like  their  grandmothers.  So  far 
science .  That  much  we  know . 

But  from  this,  to  assume  that,  without  in¬ 
telligent  control,  by  happy-go-lucky  chance, 
which  happened  to  fit,  and  happened  to  stay, 
not  the  varieties  of  species,  but  the  infinite 
varieties  of  all  known  things,  animal  and  vege¬ 
table,  the  toad-stool  and  the  toad,  the  sage- 
bush  and  the  sage,  the  blind-worm  and  William 
Shakespeare,  all  came  from  the  same  grand¬ 
father,  and  evolved  themselves  somehow — 
nobody  knows  how,  in  some  place — nobody 
knows  where,  in  some  time — nobody  knows 
when,  and  by  the  power  of  a  formula,  namely, 
'‘survival  of  the  fittest,”  from  the  same  origi¬ 
nal  mud-bath,  I  humbly  beg  to  believe  is  not 
science,  and  scarce  a  rational  guess,  to  the 
thought  of  men  whose  brains  are  yet  normal. 

For  there  is  not  in  all  the  historic  period,  in 
all  the  records  of  all  the  past  wherein  men 


HUGH  MILLER  THOMPSON. 


31 


lived,  nor  in  any  bones  dug  up  in  any  place,  a 
single  case  in  evidence  where  a  cat  became  a 
dog,  an  oyster  ever  became  a  clam,  or  an  oak 
tree  became  a  chestnut  tree.  So  far  are  we 
from  evidence  that  a  sponge  was  the  kosmic 
grandfather  of  Plato. 

I  am  not  concerned  to  dwell  here  upon  the 
enormous  difficulties,  the  unbridged  gaps,  the 
wild  guesses,  and  bald  assumptions  with 
which  the  amiable  naturalist  weaves  his  ro¬ 
mance,  nor  even  to  call  attention  to  the  fact 
that  in  his  last  editions  he  has  practically 
given  up  the  position  of  the  first.  These 
things  are  all  treated  of  abundantly  by  scien¬ 
tific  men,  and  will  be  hereafter. 

I  am  dealing  here  with  the  central  idea  of 
Mr.  Darwin,  organized  into  his  philosophy  by 
Mr.  Spencer,  that  in  all  these  changes  there 
is  no  sense.  The  logical  lapse  is  enormous. 
The  only  changes,  marked  and  striking  (but 
within  the  bounds  of  species),  are  of  animals 
and  plants  in  domestication ,  under  control  of 
reason  and  will,  modifying  and  even  opposing 
nature  ;  and  Mr.  Darwin’s  logical  conclusion 
is,  that  when  he  finds  changes,  not  under  do¬ 
mestication,  he  is  to  assume  there  is  no  reason 
and  no  will  in  the  case  ! 


32 


BEDELL  LECTURES. 


The  pouter  pigeon,  in  so  far  as  he  differs 
from  the  other  pigeons,  does  so  because  a 
rational  will  and  purpose  controls  him  and 
keeps  him  a  pouter,  indeed  made  him  a 
pouter  in  the  first  place  for  reasons  of  its  own. 
Mr.  Darwin  hence  concludes  that  the  pigeon 
himself  was  made  without  any  rational  will  or 
intention,  and  stays  a  pigeon  for  no  reason  or 
end  whatever.  You  may  call  this  ‘‘science,” 
for  people  talk  very  loosely  nowadays  ;  but, 
gentlemen,  you  have  studied  logic — is  it 
logic  ? 

Years  and  generations  of  careful  training 
with  a  specific  purpose,  by  a  rational  will,  has 
succeeded  in  making  a  setter  dog.  It  has  not 
made  a  horse  of  him,  and  the  idea  that  it 
could,  even  if  carried  to  the  end  of  time,  would 
be  considered  a  very  “pseud-idea”  indeed. 
The  dog  has  not  shown  the  slightest  tendency 
even  to  become  a  fox  or  a  wolf.  He  is  still  a 
dog.  But  he  is  a  particular  type  of  dog,  with 
particular  tendencies  and  capacities,  which  are 
kept  cultivated  and  intended  for  a  specific 
purpose.  Let  him  go  his  own  way,  and,  in  a 
few  generations,  left  to  nature,  your  highbred 
setter  is  a  mongrel  cur,  making  night  hideous 
with  the  dogs  of  Constantinople. 


HUGH  MILLER  THOMPSON . 


33 


Now  shall  I  be  told  that  while  it  requires 
reason,  fixed  purpose,  and  the  sensible  man¬ 
agement  of  a  controlling  will,  to  keep  and 
preserve  the  small  variation  which  makes  the 
setter,  since  it  will  disappear  if  the  setter  is 
turned  loose  to  nature’s  care,  yet  the  enor¬ 
mous  variation,  which  differentiates  the  entire 
dog  from  a  dogwood  blossom,  was  brought 
about  without  any  reason,  or  any  sense,  or  any 
will,  and  for  no  purpose  ? 

Mind,  this  is  not  even  questioning  that  the 
dog  may  be  the  product  of  Bathybius.  It  is 
only  asking,  if  it  takes  some  sense,  will,  and 
purpose  to  make  a  setter  out  of  a  cur,  and  keep 
him  setter,  whether  it  is  rational,  logical,  and 
highly  scientific  to  conclude  that  it  took  no 
will,  no  purpose,  no  rational  sense  to  make  a 
dog  out  of  Bathybius,  and  keep  him  a  dog  ? 

The  scientific  people  have  their  own  work 
in  this  business,  and  some  of  them  are  attend¬ 
ing  to  it  as  they  ought  to  do.  They  are  show¬ 
ing  the  facts  distorted,  the  theories  assumed  as 
facts,  the  staring  facts  put  aside,  the  evidence 
built  on  guesses  and  a  priori  assumptions 
which  have  no  place  in  natural  science,  and 
which  every  man  has  the  inherent  right  to 
make  for  himself,  and  every  other  man  has  the 
inherent  right  to  deny  ! 


34 


BEDELL  LECTURES . 


But  here  we  have  only  time  to  point  to  the 
perversions  of  logic,  which  are  perhaps  not  to 
be  wondered  at  in  a  system  which  begins  by 
denying  any  logic  in  the  universe. 

Take  the  very  definition  of  evolution  as  ap¬ 
plied  to  biology  :  natural  selection — survival  of 
the  fittest.  Selection  of  what  ?  Survival  of  what? 

Mr.  Darwin  holds  that  man’s  immediate  an¬ 
cestor  was  a  monkey,  arboreal  in  his  habits 
(lived  in  trees,  that  is),  was  covered  with 
hair,  and  had  a  tail.  Now,  some  monkey  of 
this  breed  took  a  step  some  time  toward  be¬ 
coming  a  man.  What  was  it  ?  He  must  have 
come  down  out  of  the  trees  !  He  must  have 
determined  to  stop  being  monkey  to  the  de¬ 
gree  of  walking  on  his  hind  legs !  He  must 
have  taken  some  method  to  gradually  get  rid 
of  his  tail  ! 

Now,  notice,  the  long  forearms,  the  claws, 
the  prehensile  tail,  had  been,  by  Mr.  Darwin’s 
theory,  developed  to  enable  the  creature  to 
live  in  trees.  He  and  his  survived,  according 
to  Mr.  Spencer,  because,  having  such  tails, 
claws,  four  feet,  which  were  not  hands  and  not 
feet  either,  thick  skulls,  little  brain,  and  conse¬ 
quently  light  heads,  and  hairy  bodies,  they 
were  best  fitted  to  live  in  trees. 


HUGH  MILLER  THOMPSON. 


35 


And  now  the  first  adventurous  monkey  who 
has  the  ambition  to  become  a  man,  foregoes 
all  these  advantages,  insists  on  tottering  on 
his  hinder  legs  and  disusing  his  tail ;  insists  on 
coming  down  out  of  the  trees  where  he  could 
gather  nuts,  escape  stronger  animals,  swing  by 
his  tail,  and  curl  up  warm  in  his  fur ;  insists 
on  throwing  away  his  advantages  as  a  quite 
admirable  monkey,  and  becoming  a  very  imbe¬ 
cile,  idiotic,  and  helpless  man.  Why,  such  a 
monkey  would  have  been  torn  limb  from  limb 
the  first  day  by  some  wildcat.  He  would  have 
starved  to  death  because  he  would  not  climb 
for  nuts.  He  would  have  been  pelted  to  death 
in  derision  of  his  folly  by  his  own  companions. 
In  some  one  of  a  hundred  wretched  ways  our 
supposed  ambitious  ancestor  would  have  per¬ 
ished — when  he  had  given  up  all  his  advan¬ 
tages  as  a  monkey,  and  had  not  acquired  a 
single  advantage  as  a  man  ! 

Seriously,  I  mean,  that  just  here  is  a  logical 
gulf  which  is  impassable.  What  the  developing 
monkey  gained,  to  enable  him  to  survive  as 
the  fittest,  must  have  been  in  the  direction  of 
making  him  a  complete  monkey — never  in 
the  direction  of  making  him  like  a  fish  or 
like  a  man. 


36 


BEDELL  LECTURES. 


What  enables  the  dog  to  survive  on  the 
principle,  if  it  be  a  principle,  of  survival  of  the 
fittest,  must  be  that  he  becomes  in  some  direc¬ 
tion  more  of  a  dog.  No  possible  development 
of  a  trout,  in  the  direction  of  survival  of  the 
fittest,  would  ever  make  the  trout  successful 
on  dry  land.  If  the  theory  of  some  modern 
biologists,  that  birds  are  the  descendants  of 
snakes,  were  true  (which  I  do  not,  of  course, 
believe),  it  surely  must  find  it  hard  to  place 
itself  under  the  laws  of  development.  The 
snake,  whose  prey  is  to  be  seized  by  gliding 
noiselessly  upon  it,  without  disturbance  of  leaf 
or  branch  or  dry  twig  (if  he  be  a  tree-climbing 
snake),  must  have  strangely  embarrassed  his 
proceedings  by  fluttering  and  plunging  about 
with  his  useless  embryo  wings,  to  the  alarm  of 
the  whole  forest — wings  he  could  not  fly  with 
yet,  and  which  spoiled  his  shape  for  creeping. 
He  lost  his  advantage  of  fitness  as  a  snake, 
and  had  acquired  no  advantage  yet  as  a 
bird  ! 

And  that  is  the  difficulty  in  the  combination 
of  these  two  theories,  which  are  strangely  con¬ 
founded,  while  they  are  totally  separate  and 
even  mutually  destructive. 

“  Survival  of  the  fittest  ”  has  nothing  to  do 


HUGH  MILLER  THOMPSON. 


37 


with  creation  of  species.  Indeed,  its  operation, 
if  one  examine,  would  be  to  render  mutation 
of  species  impossible.  Each  soldier  in  the 
struggle  for  existence  handles  his  own  weapon 
best.  The  eagle  survives  as  the  fittest  eagle. 
No  fitness  as  an  eagle  makes  him  likely  to  sur¬ 
vive  as  a  swan.  That  which  makes  the  horse 
survive  is  the  excellence  of  the  qualities  which 
make  him  a  horse — a  lion’s  claws,  an  eagle’s 
wings,  a  whale’s  fins,  would  not  help  him.  And 
that  which  makes  the  monkey  survive,  is  that 
he  is  a  capable,  shrewd,  cunning,  flexible¬ 
handed,  and  flexible-spined  monkey.  He 
survives  because  his  development  is  on  the 
line  of  monkey-development,  and  he  is  the 
*  fittest  monkey  to  exist.  Any  attempt  to  imi¬ 
tate  a  man,  to  put  clothes  upon  himself,  to 
walk  on  two  hands,  to  stand  erect,  to  do  with¬ 
out  those  big  jaws  which  crack  the  nuts,  or  to 
get  a  bigger  brain  which  would  make  him 
giddy, — all  this  would  not  help  him  to  be  a 
man,  and  would  be  his  utter  ruin  as  a 
monkey. 

So  enormous  is  the  gap  to  be  bridged  that 
Mr.  Wallace  (who  wrought  out  the  theory  of 
natural  selection  about  the  same  time  as  Mr. 
Darwin,  and  quite  independently)  cannot 


38 


BEDELL  LECTURES . 


bring  himself  to  include  man  in  its  working. 
Mr.  Darwin,  however,  more  logically,  includes 
him, — and,  indeed,  if  the  blind  chances  of 
matter  vibrating  from  homogeneous  to  hetero¬ 
geneous  is  able  to  account  for  all  the  rest 
of  the  universe,  one  need  not  stop  at  man  ! 

Yet  man  is  the  completion — the  crown  of 
all  the  selection,  and  all  the  survival,  accord¬ 
ing  to  the  theory.  And  there  is  this  curious 
consequence.  Not  only  his  existence,  but  his 
life,  his  words,  his  works,  his  thoughts,  his 
affections,  must  all  be  accounted  for  by  the 
action  of  force.  You  must  look  to  weigh  his 
love  and  hate  by  foot-pounds,  as  you  weigh  any 
other  manifestation  of  force.  His  patriotism, 
his  sense  of  justice,  his  benevolence,  must  be 
expressible  in  the  units  of  the  metric  system. 
His  most  elevated  religious  feeling,  his  ten- 
derest  human  sentiment,  must  be  expressible 
in  measures  of  force.  You  must  be  prepared 
to  accept  the  thought  of  a  Shakespeare  or  a 
Bacon,  as  the  equivalent  of  the  force,  that  fats 
a  swine  or  makes  a  dunghill  rot ! 

It  is  necessary  at  times  to  take  matters  out 
of  the  veil  of  learned  phrases  in  which  they 
are  concealed,  and  put  them  in  simple  Eng¬ 
lish,  that  we  may  understand.  The  result  I 


HUGH  MILLER  THOMPSON. 


39 


have  mentioned  is  accepted  by  the  philosophy 
of  evolution,  on  its  so-called  law  of  the 
correlation  and  conservation  of  force :  a 
Principia  manifests  the  same  force  which  fats 
a  bullock  ;  and  a  Hamlet,  the  force  that  rots 
him  by  the  roadside  should  you  leave  him 
there.  All  is  from  molecular  motion,  and 
there  is  as  much  sense  in  one  set  of  vibrations 
as  in  another  !  But  here  again  comes  in  the 
I  of  man, — the  will,  the  personality,  the 
self-assertion.  Define  him  as  you  will,  and 
theorize  about  his  coming  as  you  will,  here 
man  is,  with  a  reason,  and  he  demands  that 
nature  must  be  rational.  He  declines  to  sub¬ 
mit  to  any  thing  he  judges  irrational.  If 
matter  has  developed  him  by  any  rule  of 
thumb,  like  survival  of  the  fittest,  he  acts 
very  strangely  toward  his  Creator. 

He  turns  right  about  on  nature,  and  says,  I, 
and  not  you,  shall  decide  what  and  who  is 
fittest.  You  say  weeds,  I  say  corn.  You  say 
cockle,  I  say  wheat.  You  say  wolves,  I  say 
sheep.  You  say  hawks,  I  say  doves.  What  I 
consider  fittest,  shall  survive  in  spite  of  you  ; 
and  your  fittest,  which  you  are  trying  with  all 
your  powers  to  preserve,  shall  perish  at  my 
word.  You  have  used  your  utmost  to  make 


40 


BEDELL  LECTURES. 


the  swamp  survive.  Lo,  I  say  it  shall  perish  ! 
To  make  the  tangled  forest  survive,  and,  lo  I 
destroy  it,  and  the  fair  geen  meadow  survives 
it  its  stead. 

Has  survival  of  the  fittest  developed  then  its 
own  master  ?  It  would  seem  so.  There  is  no 
way  to  explain  these  things  away  and  leave 
the  universal  common-sense  of  men  existing. 

Mr.  Huxley  is  compelled  to  admit  that  our 
“  will  counts  for  something  in  the  course  of 
events.”  If  it  counts  for  any  thing,  it  traverses 
fatally  the  philosophy  of  development.  But 
men’s  common  sense,  and  common  eyesight, 
and  common  consciousness,  tell  them  it  counts 
for  more  on  the  face  of  this  world  than  all 
other  forces  whatever.  It  dares  to  dash  itself 
right  up  against  the  bucklers  of  blind  force, 
and  demand  a  reason.  It  compels  an  explana¬ 
tion,  and  asserts  the  mastery  of  the  will  and  the 
Logos,  the  Light  and  the  Life,  by  breaking 
the  blind  forces  into  harness,  and  driving  them 
by  that  will. 

All  other  creatures  seem  parts  of  nature, 
live  dumbly  in  accord  with  its  dumb  forces, 
question  nothing  either  in  life  or  in  death. 
This  last  strange  creature,  in  passionate  protest 
against  mere  force,  against  disorder,  confusion, 


HUGH  MILLER  THOMPSON . 


41 


and  unreason,  stands  defying  the  universe, 
and  insisting  that  if  it  be  not  rational,  he  is 
bound  to  make  it  rational,  and  will  make  it  so, 
or  die  protesting  and  armed  upon  the  field. 

“  Survival  of  the  fittest,”  is  it  ?  Who  are 
fittest  ?  What  does  nature  know  about  it ;  or 
“  natural  selection,”  when  it  comes  to  man  ? 
He  shall  decide,  I  say.  His  hunch-back  child 
shall  survive  as  Alexander  Pope,  and  write 
Dunciads  and  Essays  on  Man.  His  poor  puny 
offspring  shall  survive  as  Isaac  Newton,  to  tell 
the  world  how  its  Maker  hangs  the  stars  in 
order,  and  rolls  the  systems  in  harmony.  His 
purblind  scrufulous  son  shall  be  Dr.  Samuel 
Johnson.  His  blind  men  shall  see  Iliads  and 
Odyssies  arise  from  the  many-sounding  sea,  or 
their  sightless  eyes  shall  pierce  the  heavens 
with  Milton,  and  scan  the  secrets  of  the  abyss. 
His  weakling,  doomed  to  perish  by  your  blind 
law  of  survival,  shall  stand  upon  the  quarter¬ 
deck  of  the  Victory  and  guide  the  thunders  of 
Trafalgar.  Man  shall  measure,  by  his  own 
judgment  of  fitness,  his  own  children  ;  and  the 
weakest  of  them,  physically,  shall  be  his  heroes 
and  his  leaders,  his  lords  of  men  and  shakers 
of  the  world. 

For  here  when  we  have  scanned  the  field, 


42 


BEDELL  LECTURES. 


we  are  brought  back  to  the  old  proclamation 
of  reason  :  “In  the  beginning  was  the  Logos, 
all  things  were  made  by  Him,  and  without  Him 
was  not  any  thing  made  that  was  made.” 

And  man,  the  image  of  the  Logos,  finite, 
shadow  of  the  Eternal  and  Infinite  Reason, 
stands  facing  nature  on  his  royal  right  to  ques¬ 
tion,  to  order,  to  modify,  to  control  ;  stands 
to  vindicate,  by  his  position  of  reason,  the 
universe  as  no  Devil’s  phantasmagoria,  no 
beastly  lair  of  Setebos  and  Caliban,  but  a 
world  of  order  and  of  law,  where  all  is  reason¬ 
able  as  far  as  we  have  yet  seen,  and  in  which 
our  human  instinct  keeps  time  and  touch  so 
true  to  the  Nature  of  Things,  that  we  stride 
forward  as  if  under  an  overpowering  com¬ 
mand,  to  demand  that  it  shall  be  rational,  and 
that  we  must  make  it  rational  whereinsoever 
it  fails. 

I  hold  that  the  attitude  of  humanity,  in  this 
respect,  upon  the  earth  has  no  logical  basis,  and 
no  sufficient  scientific  basis,  save  that,  being  a 
world  of  reason,  will,  and  purpose,  this  creature 
of  reason,  will,  and  purpose  feels  it  is  his  own, 
that  it  fits  him  and  answers  to  him,  and  that 
every  step  in  the  process  of  making  it  a  human 
world,  is  another  step  in  the  making  it  divine. 


LECTURE  SECOND. 


“  They  fought  from  Heaven. 

The  stars  in  their  courses  fought  against  Sisera.” 

— Judges,  v.,  20. 

A  cry  from  a  woman’s  lips — a  triumphant 
cry  for  a  great  national  deliverance.  The 
right  cause  and  the  wrong  had  met,  as  they 
have  met  so  often  on  the  world’s  battle-fields, 
and,  on  this  field  at  least,  the  wrong  went 
down,  while,  to  outward  seeming,  the  right 
was  feeble  and  the  wrong  was  strong. 

Cruelty,  oppression,  brute  power,  with  its 
chariots  of  iron  and  its  serried  ranks  of  spears, 
met  a  hastily  gathered  band  who  fought  for 
home  and  freedom  and  order  and  right,  and  as 
at  Platea  and  Marathon,  and  on  many  a  smit¬ 
ten  field  beside,  the  right  was  victor,  to  the 
lasting  joy  of  men. 

And  this  strange  woman,  prophetess  and 
poet,  judge  and  leader,  who  had  summoned 
the  army  of  the  defenders,  sang  to  the  listen¬ 
ing  sky  her  song  of  triumph  for  her  people. 


43 


44 


BEDELL  LECTURES. 


The  victory  was  so  complete,  the  defeat  was 
so  overwhelming,  that,  praise  as  she  might,  as 
they  well  deserved,  Barak  ben  Abinoam  and 
his  ten  thousand,  the  event  was  not  thus 
explainable. 

Merely  human  forces  were  not  sufficient. 
The  victory  came  from  the  unseen  powers.  The 
eternal  righteousness  that  stands  behind  the 
shadow  of  every  temporal  wrong  had  taken  the 
cause  into  his  own  hands.  “  They  fought  from 
heaven.  The  stars  in  their  courses  fought 
against  Sisera.”  The  awful  powers  of  nature 
were  against  this  evil  man  and  the  brutally 
selfish  kingdom  he  defended.  “  The  nature 
of  things  ”  showed  itself  on  the  side  of  right¬ 
eousness. 

Is  this  the  rhapsody  of  an  excited  poetical 
imagination  only  ?  Consider  that  the  poet’s 
truth  is  always  the  highest  human  truth.  For 
he  sees  the  heart  of  things,  the  unchanging 
reality  under  the  ever-changing  show.  The 
truest  human  book  in  the  English  tongue  is 
that  which  contains  the  poems  of  Shakespeare. 
Newton’s  Principia  is  not  truer  than  Macbeth. 

But  this  woman  was  seer  and  poet  in  one. 
She  had  not  only  sight,  but  insight.  She  sang 
that  the  stars  might  hear.  She  sang  for  all 


HUGH  MILLER  THOMPSON. 


45 


the  ages.  And  because  her  utterance  was  true 
forever,  the  utterance  in  Hebrew  speech  of  an 
everlasting  law,  her  song  could  not  die  as  a 
song  of  mere  patriotic  rejoicing  ;  but  echoes 
under  all  the  skies  and  surges  up  to  all  the 
stars,  a  world’s  proclamation  :  “The  stars  in 
their  courses  fought  against  Sisera.” 

One  cannot  help  remembering  the  lonely 
soul,  gnawing  his  heart  in  pain,  grimly  wrest¬ 
ling  with  sickness  of  body  and  that  sceva,  in- 
dignatio  that  tortured  the  soul  of  Swift — the 
scorn  and  hatred  against  a  mean,  cowardly,  and 
stupid  world, — who  has  just  passed  from  among 
us,  and  how  passionately  he  clung  to  this, 
when  there  was  nothing  else  to  cling  to ;  how 
he  made  himself  its  prophet,  and  proclaimed  it 
fiercely  sometimes,  sometimes  pathetically  and 
mournfully,  that  the  “  eternal  veracities,”  at 
least,  were  always  on  the  side  of  right  and 
armed  against  wrong  ; — Thomas  Carlyle  from 
Scottish  hill-side  or  crowded  London  street 
proclaiming,  as  best  he  might,  the  law  that 
burned  upon  the  lips  of  Deborah  four  thou¬ 
sand  years  ago  ! 

I  asked  in  my  first  lecture,  Is  the  world  a 
rational  world  ?  I  ask  now,  Is  it  moral  ?  First, 
Is  there  any  sense  in  the  nature  of  things,  any 


4  6 


BEDELL  LECTURES. 


intelligence,  any  purpose  or  meaning  ?  And 
now  I  ask,  Is  there  any  right  in  the  nature  of 
things  or  any  wrong  ? 

Deborah's  cry  is  the  answer  of  the  Old  Testa¬ 
ment.  It  is  no  discord  there.  The  universal 
utterance  of  seer  and  prophet,  psalmist  and  his¬ 
torian,  is  in  accord  with  the  voice  of  her  “  who 
dwelt  beneath  the  palm-tree.”  “  The  nature 
of  things,”  the  awful  powers  seen  and  unseen, 
are  against  wrong.  The  blood  of  a  murdered 
brother  cries  from  the  ground.  The  earth  will 
not  hide  the  murder.  The  heavens  will  become 
brass  and  the  earth  iron  when  men  turn  to 
evil.  The  burden  of  the  ancient  book  from 
first  to  last  is  a  proclamation  that  the  forces  of 
nature  avenge  the  poor  and  the  unjustly 
oppressed,  and  are  armed  against  the  tyrant 
and  the  evil-doer,  and  the  end  is  certain  in  due 
time.  These  Hebrew  words  of  threatened 
vengeance  against  lies,  hypocrisy,  cowardice, 
selfishness,  and  wrong,  are,  when  you  examine 
them,  in  their  most  terrific  denunciations,  but 
the  proclamation  that  the  world  is  moral,  the 
kosmos  is  on  the  side  of  righteousness,  the 
stars  and  spaces  and  abysses  above,  below,  are 
against  the  evil,  are  forever  rolling  the  right 
into  light  and  victory. 


HUGH  MILLER  THOMPSON . 


47 


The  view  of  material  nature  in  the  New 
Testament  is,  as  we  might  expect,  an  illumina¬ 
tion  and  revelation  of  the  Old. 

In  our  Lord’s  parables  nature  puts  on  a 
diviner  dress.  I  wonder  shall  we  ever  dare  in 
our  theologies  to  think  of  nature  as  our  Lord 
saw  her  ?  With  Him  the  world  is  spiritual. 
Matter  is  translucent  with  the  light  divine. 
The  grass  at  His  feet  grows  in  its  way,  as  the 
archangels  grow  in  theirs.  The  sparrow’s 
law  is  a  concentric  circle  with  the  laws  that 
bind  Orion  and  the  Pleiads.  The  country 
laborer  scattering  seed  in  the  furrow,  the 
philosopher  that  sows  thought,  the  preacher 
that  scatters  principles  among  men, — even  the 
eternal  Logos  and  Son  of  Man  Himself  who 
drops  living  words  into  the  seed-bed  of  men’s 
souls,  work  on  a  continuous  line,  under  one 
law,  whose  circuit  sweeps  the  infinite. 

Facing  this  doctrine  of  Revelation  stands 
the  doctrine  of  what  is  called  “  Science.”  Here 
again  there  is  absolutely  no  reconciliation. 
Evolution,  as  a  system  of  ethics,  declares  the 
universe  not  z'wmoral  indeed,  for  that  would 
be  to  give  it  some  spiritual  value,  but  abso¬ 
lutely  amoral.  The  moral  qualities  of  men, 
like  the  intellect  of  men,  are  the  result  of 


48 


BEDELL  LECTURES. 


molecular  vibrations.  By  a  law  of  fatal  neces¬ 
sity,  the  same  force  that  acts  in  the  brain  and 
arm  of  the  murderer,  acts  also  in  the  brain  and 
heart  of  the  tenderest  mother  that  watches 
over  her  baby’s  cradle.  The  action  in  each 
case  is,  in  the  last  analysis,  absolutely  indif¬ 
ferent,  even  absolutely  the  same. 

What  we  call  morality  is  only  the  result  of 
inherited  molecular  movement  in  the  brain. 
There  is  no  absolute  right  or  wrong  in  the 
case,  none  in  the  world,  no  ultimate  “  I  ought,” 
anywhere,  and  the  whole  kosmos  which  has 
been  evolved  by  the  rhythmic  vibrations  of  the 
atoms  is  absolutely  indifferent  to  rights  and 
wrongs. 

You  will  observe  that  the  system  does  not 
deny  that  there  are  such  words  as  right  and 
wrong,  and  that  they  represent  something. 
But  what  they  represent  is  purely  conventional 
— the  notions  that  have  been  formed  by  hered¬ 
ity,  by  the  law  of  the  survival  of  the  fittest,  in 
men  trying  to  live  together  in  a  social  order. 

They  have  no  value,  I  mean,  outside  of  the 
environment.  They  are  not  of  the  essence  or 
necessity  of  things — these  ideas  of  right  and 
wrong.  There  is  nothing  answering  to  them 
in  the  universe.  They  have  been  evolved  out 


HUGH  MILLER  THOMPSON. 


49 


of  matter  and  will  fall  back  like  every  thing 
else  into  the  homogeneity  of  the  world-mist 
again,  the  weltering  chaos  of  gases,  which  is 
the  same  stuff  out  of  which  are  made  all  virtues 
and  all  goodnesses,  all  lovelinesses  and  tender¬ 
nesses,  as  well  as  all  lusts  and  all  beastlinesses, 
all  swine  and  all  sties  for  swine. 

I  desire  to  put  the  conclusion  which  is 
accepted,  and  even  gloried  in,  by  the  masters 
in  this  school,  into  the  plainest  English,  that 
we  see  it  for  what  it  is — something  that  is  apt 
to  escape  us  when  left  in  the  large  and  learn¬ 
edly  sounding  syllables  of  “  science  !  ” 

Now  let  us  observe  here  that  no  matter 
what  may  be  the  explanation  of,  the  origin  of, 
the  ideas  of  right  and  wrong,  the  fact  of  their 
existence  in  man  is  admitted  of  necessity. 
The  doctrine  of  evolution  requires  that  they 
shall  have  been  evolved  from  the  original  cell 
like  all  else,  and  were  latent  and  potential  in 
the  hypothetical  fire-mist  of  the  nebular 
theory.  But  the  theorist  is  bound  to  admit 
their  present  existence  as  much  as  you  or  I. 
H  e  is  of  course  also  bound  to  show  how  they 
gradually  grew  to  be  what  they  are  in  a 
Christian  man,  in  the  saintliest  soul  that  ever 
blessed  the  world,  in  our  Lord  Himself  (let  us 


5o 


BEDELL  LECTURES. 


state  the  conclusion  without  a  word  of  the 
horror  it  inspires),  through  crawling  worm, 
lemur,  and  ape  and  brutal  savage — the  same 
in  all,  and  in  their  activity  in  all  just  the  same 
— the  blind  quiverings,  the  attractions  and 
repulsions  of  matter ! 

But  the  fact  is  that  here  is  a  being  who  has 
a  conscience,  as  we  call  it,  as  well  as  a  con¬ 
sciousness.  Barbarous  or  civilized,  in  the 
Feejee  Islands  or  in  London,  it  is  all  the 
same  :  this  unique  being  has  the  sense  of  right 
and  wrong,  goodness  and  badness,  differ  as  he 
may  about  his  classification  of  those  qualities. 

It  is  the  power  to  make  a  moral  judgment 
I  am  speaking  of,  not  at  all  the  manner  in 
which  such  judgment  acts.  The  lameness  of 
the  explanation  of  evolution  is  that  it  misses 
the  real  point  here,  or  ignores.  From  animal 
instincts  and  from  hereditary  influences  after 
the  beast  developed  into  a  man,  from  the  blind 
gropings  of  a  creature  trying  to  survive  in  his 
environment,  it  might  be  not  a  vagary  of  the 
scientific  imagination  to  hold  that  a  notion  of 
certain  things  as  bad  and  certain  things  as 
good  might  arise.  As  one  of  our  wisest  has 
said:  “The  ox,  if  he  could  think,  would  call 
the  grazier  a  good  man  because  he  feeds  oxen, 


HUGH  MILLER  THOMPSON. 


51 


and  the  butcher  a  bad  man  because  he 
slaughters  them.” 

Therefore  it  is  that  evolution  must  deny  any 
absolute  morality  at  all.  Moral  notions  are 
the  growth  of  the  struggle  for  existence,  like 
all  else.  In  themselves  they  have  no  moral 
value.  If  we  attribute  such  value,  it  is  a  de¬ 
lusion  which  also  comes  from  pure  selfishness 
on  our  part,  because  the  good  man’s  acts  are 
profitable  to  us.  Altruism,  which  is  the  high¬ 
est  test  of  evolutionary  morality,  is  only  good 
because  civilized  man  cannot  survive  in  the 
struggle  for  existence  unless  he  gives  others  a 
chance.  Pleasure,  therefore,  is,  after  all,  the 
necessary  root  of  all  morality.  Pleasure  is  the 
only  absolutely  good  thing,  and  pain  the  only 
absolutely  evil.  It  is  of  course  impossible  to 
found  absolute  morality  on  a  sensation.  But, 
indeed,  I  need  scarcely  dwell  so  long  on  this, 
since  the  theory  denies  that  there  is  any  thing 
absolute  except  matter  and  force — if  indeed 
they  be  two  and  not  one — and  both  are  alike 
unknowable.1 


1  I  have  avoided  speaking  of  the  very  ugly  practical  consequences 
which  grow  out  of  the  doctrine  of  evolution,  when  it  is  applied  to 
ethics.  I  may  quote  a  Scotchman  and  a  German  to  show  the  fruit¬ 
fulness  of  the  doctrine  and  the  nature  of  the  fruit. 

The  Scotch  professor,  Alexander  Bain,  in  a  lecture  on  the 


52 


BEDELL  LECTURES. 


But  we  have  to  face  a  fact  which  I  hesitate 
not  to  say  is  universal  in  man,  and  which  makes 
him  unique  among  living  beings  on  the  earth, 
— the  fact,  namely,  that  he  has  the  power  of 
exercising  moral  judgments,  and  that  he 
habitually  exercises  them  ;  that  this  power  is 
just  as  plainly  his  as  the  power  of  sight  or  the 
power  of  reflection  ;  that  its  habitual  exercise  is 
one  of  his  most  ordinary  activities  ;  that  he  is  a 

“Correlation  of  Nervous  and  Mental  Forces,”  reprinted  in  a  volume 
of  Appleton’s  “  Scientific  Series,”  remarks  of  excitement  :  “  It  is  not 
a  final  end  of  our  being,  as  pleasure  is.”  The  equivalent  of  this 
is  repeated  more  than  once.  Prof.  Bain  does  not  seem  to  be  aware 
that  there  is  any  doubt  that  pain  is  the  sole  evil  and  pleasure  the 
sole  good. 

But  the  most  curious  result  of  his  medley  of  matter  and  mind 
occurs  in  this  sentence.  He  is  speaking  of  the  consumption  of 
Force  in  “  moral  acquisitions  ”  : 

“  The  carefully  poised  estimate  of  good  and  evil  for  self,  the  ever¬ 
present  sense  of  the  interests  of  others,  and  the  ready  obedience  to 
all  the  special  ordinances  that  make  up  the  morality  of  the  time, 
however  truly  expressed  in  terms  of  high  and  abstract  spiritu¬ 
ality,  have  their  counterpart  in  the  physical  organism.  They  have 
used  up  a  large  and  definite  amount  of  nutriment,  and  had  they  been 
less  developed  there  would  have  been  a  gain  of  power  to  some  other 
department,  mental  or  physical.” 

That  is,  the  man  without  a  conscience  has  an  advantage  mentally 
or  physically!  He  is  much  more  likely  to  “succeed”!  And 
benevolence,  conscientiousness,  piety  uses  up  a  “  definite  amount  of 
nutriment  (measurable  in  foot-pounds)  which  might  have  gone  to 
making  a  fortune  or  winning  a  prize-fight. 

When  “  moral  philosophy  ”  lands  us  here,  the  end  of  that  species  of 
it  is  not  far  off. 

Prof.  Ed.  V.  Hartmann  in  his  “  Philosophy  of  the  Unknown  ”  has 


HUGH  MILLER  THOMPSON . 


53 


moral  being  as  plainly  as  he  is  a  seeing  or  re¬ 
flecting  being. 

The  question  is  not  how  came  he  to  have 
such  and  such  moral  opinions — they  may  be 
right  or  wrong, — but  how  came  he  to  have 
moral  insight  at  all  ?  Whence,  in  a  blind 
world  of  mere  atomic  quiverings,  came  a  be¬ 
ing  who,  apart  from  all  questions  of  force  and 
all  questions  of  pleasure,  in  addition  to  all  other 

a  more  cynical  frankness  than  his  Scotch  brother  of  the  same  school. 
He  says  :  “  It  is  important  to  make  beast  life  better  known  to  youth 
as  being  the  truest  source  of  pure  nature,  wherein  they  may  learn  to 
understand  their  true  being  in  its  simplest  form,  and,  in  it,  rest  and 
refresh  themselves ,  after  the  artificiality  and  deformity  of  our  social 
condition.” 

Again  :  “  Let  us  only  think  how  agreeably  an  ox  or  a  hog  lives, 
almost  as  if  he  had  learned  to  do  so  from  Aristotle  !  ” 

And  why  not  ?  As  long  as  he  has  enough  to  eat,  and  a  good  place 
to  wallow,  he  is  “  in  harmony  with  his  own  environment  ” — Mr. 
Spencer’s  idea  of  a  perfect  condition, — and  is  seeking  faithfully  what 
Mr.  Bain  teaches  is  the. true  end,  not  only  of  the  hog’s  existence,  but 
of  the  existence  of  the  hog’s  Darwinian  cousins,  for  whom  Mr.  B. 
lectures, — pleasure  !  Queer  doctrine  in  the  Scotland  of  John  Knox  ! 

To  clear  the  atmosphere  after  this,  let  us  have  a  blast  of  fresh  air 
from  the  heather.  Let  “  true  Thomas,”  the  one  Scottish  writing- 
man  of  our  time,  say  his  say  : 

“Has  the  word  *  Duty  ’  no  meaning  ?  Is  what  we  call  Duty  no 
Divine  messenger  and  guide,  but  a  false  earthly  phantasm  made  up 
of  desire  and  fear  ?  Is  the  heroic  inspiration  we  name  Virtue,  but 
some  passion,  some  bubble  of  the  blood,  bubbling  in  the  direction 
others  profit  by  ?  [altruism  of  Mr.  Spencer].  I  know  not,  only  this 
I  know  :  If  what  thou  namest  Happiness  be  our  true  aim,  then  are 
we  all  astray.  Behold  thou  art  fatherless,  outcast,  and  the  universe 
is — the  Devils .” 


54 


BEDELL  LECTURES . 


decisions,  has  that  in  him  which  decides  a  thing 
to  be  right  or  wrong  ? 

There  is  here  a  question  to  which  I  may  say 
in  all  calmness  no  proximately  adequate  answer 
has  been  attempted  by  our  science.  I  say  this 
in  the  face  of  Mr.  Spencer’s  “  Psychology,” 
Mr.  Darwin’s  “  Descent  of  Man,”  and  Prof. 
Bain  on  “  The  Emotions  and  the  Will.” 

For  the  idea  of  the  right  and  the  idea  of  the 
useful  are  fundamentally  distinct.  Indeed, 
the  moral  judgment  requires  for  its  highest 
commendation  of  an  action  that  it  should  not 
be  useful  nor  pleasurable,  nor  in  any  way  of 
benefit  to  the  doer.  Mr.  Darwin  teaches  that 
the  moral  sense  comes  from  the  development 
of  such  instincts  as  are  possessed  by  brutes — 
by  natural  selection.  The  entire  school  of 
sensationalists  tell  us  that  right  and  wrong  are 
only,  in  last  analysis,  pleasure  and  pain,  advan¬ 
tages  and  disadvantages. 

Yet  Mr.  John  Stuart  Mill  does  not  hesitate 
to  write  :  “  If  I  am  informed  that  the  world  is 
ruled  by  a  Being  whose  attributes  are  infinite, 
but  what  they  are  we  cannot  learn,  nor  what 
the  principles  of  his  government,  except  that 
the  highest  human  morality  which  we  are 
capable  of  conceiving  does  not  sanction  them, 


HUGH  MILLER  THOMPSON. 


55 


convince  me  of  it,  and  I  will  bear  my  fate  as  I 
may.  But  when  I  am  told  I  must  believe  this, 
and  at  the  same  time  call  this  being  by  the 
names  which  express  and  affirm  the  highest 
human  morality,  I  say,  in  plain  terms,  that  I 
will  not.  Whatever  power  such  a  being  may 
have  over  me,  there  is  one  thing  which  he 
shall  not  do,  he  shall  not  compel  me  to  worship 
him.  I  will  call  no  being  good  who  is  not 
what  I  mean  when  I  apply  that  epithet  to  my 
fellow-creatures,  and  if  such  a  being  can  sen¬ 
tence  me  to  hell,  to  hell  I  will  go.” 

The  sentiment  of  the  believer  in  absolute 
right  and  wrong  could  not  be  more  strongly 
or  better  expressed.  It  is  not  a  question  of 
profit,  or  pleasure,  or  advantage.  The  human 
soul  stands  upon  its  moral  dignity  and  declares 
that  no  power  shall  make  it  surrender  itself  to 
be  the  slave  of  the  evil,  and  no  inducement 
make  it  lie  to  its  own  nature  and  call  that  evil 
good. 

Mr.  Mill  bears  witness  to  the  rooted  intui¬ 
tion  which  no  false  theories  can  destroy  out  of 
humanity.  He  bears  witness  as  well  to  the 
identity  and  permanence  of  that  intuition  as  a 
part  of  human  nature,  when  he,  the  English¬ 
man,  repeats  in  English  what  was  a  Roman 


56 


BEDELL  LECTURES. 


utterance  centuries  ago  :  “  Victrix  causa  placuit 
diis  sed  victa  Catoni.”  Nay,  no  sophistries,  no 
theorizing,  no  juggle  of  long  words,  and  no 
explaining  away  will  rid  us  of  this  persistent 
fact,  that  among  men  in  all  lands  and  times 
there  has  been  this  gift  of  moral  judgment, 
this  prompt  readiness  to  make  it  about  one’s 
self  and  others,  this  conviction  that,  when 
made,  men  would  understand  it,  and  if  true 
would  accept  it,  and  that  such  judgment  has 
appealed  to  an  absolute  morality  which  stands 
apart  from  pleasure  or  pain,  from  profit  or 
loss.  “  Fiat  justitia  ruat  ccelum ,”  is  a  maxim 
that  the  moral  sense  accepts  universally,  and 
the  loftiest  and  grandest  right  act  is  the  act 
out  of  which  only  sorrow,  pain,  and  loss  must 
come  to  the  doer. 

Here  again  man  turns  to  nature  and  asserts 
his  sovereignty.  Produced  from  matter  and 
force  like  the  beast  or  the  grass-blade,  accord¬ 
ing  to  the  evolution  hypothesis,  he  turns  on 
the  power  that  produced  him  and  demands  its 
meaning,  orders  it  to  the  bar  of  his  causality 
and  asks  it  for  an  account  of  itself.  But,  also, 
he  summons  it  before  the  court  of  his  con¬ 
science  and  demands  to  know  whether  it  is 
moral  or  immoral,  whether  its  working  is  right 


HUGH  MILLER  THOMPSON. 


57 


or  wrong,  whether  it  can  answer  for  itself  not 
only  to  a  being  who  asks  :  “  Have  you  any 
sense  ?”  but  to  a  being  who  asks  also  :  “  Have 
you  any  righteousness  ?  ” 

Testifying  to  the  permanence  and  imma¬ 
nence  of  this  moral  conviction  of  an  absolute 
righteousness  in  the  face  of  his  own  poor  the¬ 
ories,  behold  Mr.  Mill  again  arraigning  all 
nature,  without  a  thought  that  on  his  princi¬ 
ples  he  is  merely  nature’s  product,  like  his 
own  cabbages,  and,  as  judge,  condemning  her. 
That  arraignment  and  that  judgment,  in  his 
“  Posthumous  Essays,”  stands  a  memorable 
triumph  of  the  existence  and  persistence  of 
fact  over  the  finest-spun  theories,  and  an  ex¬ 
ample  of  the  kingly  position  the  human  soul 
instinctively  takes  in  facing  all  powers  outside 
itself  in  this  realm  the  Father  gave  his  chil¬ 
dren. 

“  The  order  of  nature,  so  far  as  it  is  un¬ 
modified  by  man,  is  such  as  no  being,  whose 
attributes  are  justice  and  benevolence,  would 
have  made  with  the  intention  that  his  rational 
creatures  should  follow  it  as  an  example.” 

“  The  ways  of  nature  are  to  be  conquered, 
not  obeyed.  Her  powers  are  often  toward 
man  in  the  position  of  enemies.” 


58 


BEDELL  LECTURES. 


“  If  the  artificial  is  not  better  than  the  natu¬ 
ral,  to  what  end  all  the  arts  of  life  ?  To  dig, 
to  plough,  to  build,  to  wear  clothes,  are  direct 
infringements  of  the  injunction  to  follow  na¬ 
ture.  All  praise  of  civilization,  or  art,  or  con¬ 
trivance,  is  so  much  dispraise  of  nature.” 

And  this,  a  direct  blow  and  a  staggering, 
delivered  with  another  purpose,  to  be  sure, 
straight  in  the  face  of  the  physical  fatalism  of 
Mr.  Darwin  and  Mr.  Spencer  :  “  If  action  could 
at  all  be  justified,  it  would  only  be  in  direct 
obedience  to  instincts,  since  these  might  be 
accounted  part  of  the  spontaneous  order  of 
nature,  but  to  do  any  thing  with  forethought 
and  purpose  would  be  a  violation  of  that  per¬ 
fect  order.” 

I  may  quote  just  here  Mr.  Spencer’s  rejoi¬ 
cing  over  the  utter  absence  of  moral  freedom, 
and  his  acceptance  of  that  moral  condition 
which  Mr.  Mill  recoils  from  in  horror. 

“  I  will  only  further  say  that  freedom  of  the 
will,  did  it  exist,  would  be  at  variance  with  the 
beneficent  necessity  displayed  in  the  evolution 
of  the  correspondence  between  the  organism 
and  the  environment.  *  *  *  Were  the  inner 
relations  partly  determined  by  some  other 
agency,  the  harmony  at  any  moment  existing 


HUGH  MILLER  THOMPSON. 


59 


would  be  disturbed,  and  the  advance  to  a 
higher  harmony  impeded.  There  would  be  a 
retardation  of  that  grand  progress  which  is 
bearing  humanity  onward  to  a  higher  intelli¬ 
gence  and  a  nobler  character.” 

One  moment  only  upon  this  to  plumb  the 
ethical  philosophy  of  evolution.  If  there  were 
free  will,  free  moral  choice,  so  that  the  man 
tempted  to  murder  had  his  “  inner  relations 
partly  determined  by  some  other  agency  ” 
(conscience,  for  instance,  instilled  moral  prin¬ 
ciples,  or  any  other  check),  which  would  “  dis¬ 
turb  the  harmony”  of  the  environment  (place, 
time,  secret  opportunity)  which  leads  him  to 
murder,  “  there  would  be  a  retardation  of  the 
grand  progress  which  is  bearing  humanity 
onward,”  etc  ! 

I  have  not  quoted  this  to  show  the  immo¬ 
rality  of  the  ethical  philosophy  which  the  evolu¬ 
tion  hypothesis  necessarily  evolves,  and  the  com¬ 
plete  blindness  of  a  virtuous  man  to  the  conse¬ 
quences  of  his  own  theories  and  the  meaning 
of  his  own  words,  for  certainly  Mr.  Spencer  has 
not  the  remotest  idea  that  his  philosophy  is 
immoral,  and  has  expressed  his  surprise  that  it 
should  so  appear  to  any.  I  have  quoted  to 
show,  as  in  the  case  of  Mr.  Mill,  that  men 


6o 


BEDELL  LECTURES. 


never  hesitate  to  make  moral  decisions,  al¬ 
though  their  theories  require  them  to  deny  the 
existence  of  any  absolute  morality,  and  even 
the  existence  of  any  moral  distinctions. 

Mr.  Spencer  does  not  hesitate  to  call  things 
“  beneficent,”  to  speak  of  them  as  “  grand  ”  and 
“high”  and  “  noble,”  as  if  these  qualities  had 
real  existence,  and  as  if  man  had  the  unques¬ 
tionable  power  to  decide  in  what  they  existed, 
could  recognize  and  define  them  by  some  stan¬ 
dard  universally  acknowledged  by  human  judg¬ 
ment.  To  him  the  order  of  nature  is  grand, 
noble,  and  beneficent.  To  Mr.  Mill  it  is  cruel, 
inhuman,  and  to  be  opposed  by  men.  Each 
cites  the  order  of  nature  to  the  bar  of  his  consci¬ 
ence  as  he  does  to  the  bar  of  his  intellect,  and 
decides  upon  its  morals  as  upon  its  rationality. 

Now  evidently  the  standard  of  the  morality 
must  be  like  the  standard  of  rationality,  outside 
nature  which  is  tried  and  outside  the  judges 
who  try  it.  It  must  be  an  independent  and 
absolute  standard  in  the  minds  of  both,  other¬ 
wise  there  could  be  no  certainty  that  the  ethi¬ 
cal  judgment  or  its  grounds,  or  even  the  words 
which  express  it,  would  be  understood  by  their 
readers.  Each  is  confident  of  an  ethical  judg¬ 
ment  in  himself,  and  recognizes,  by  making  it, 
its  existence  in  all  other  men. 


HUGH  MILLER  THOMPSON. 


6l 


But  he  not  only  does  this,  but  holds  this 
ethical  judgment  in  humanity  to  be  so  sovereign 
and  royal  that  it  is  capable  of  deciding,  and  by 
right  does  try  and  decide,  the  moral  character 
of  the  universe,  and  its  order,  and,  by  conse¬ 
quence,  the  moral  character  of  its  maker — 
whether  you  call  him  the  Father  Almighty, 
or  “  the  Power  behind  phenomena  !  ” 

And  these  writers  are  only  doing  what  all 
writers  have  been  doing,  since  there  were 
writers  at  all ;  indeed,  what  all  men  have  been 
doing  since  we  know  they  have  been  doing  any 
thing. 

Take  out  of  the  world’s  literatures  all  that 
relates  to  moral  questions,  and  the  shelves  of 
our  libraries  would  be  bare  indeed.  I  do  not 
mean  the  books  which  formally  deal  with  ethics 
merely.  I  mean  that  books  like  life  are  satu¬ 
rated  with  the  ethical  principle.  All  great 
writers  are  necessarily  ethical  writers.  The 
moral  question,  the  persistent  “  I  ought,”  is 
as  prominent  in  Shakespeare  and  Dante  as  if 
they  were  formal  moralists. 

It  cannot  be  otherwise.  Nothing  is  so  press¬ 
ing  upon  men  as  the  question  of  what  “  ought 
to  be,”  ought  to  be  done,  ought  to  be  said,  and 
ought  to  be  the  result  of  the  doing  and  saying. 
The  poets  are  full  of  it,  the  novelists  are  full 


62 


BEDELL  LECTURES . 


of  it,  as  well  as  the  codes  and  the  religions. 
Forever  in  all  his  relations  the  question  of  the 
duty,  the  thing  due,  the  thing  he  ought,  the 
thing  he  owes  in  such  and  such  circumstances, 
is  a  living  and  pressing  question  among  men. 
One  of  the  vastest  sides  of  his  intellectual  ac¬ 
tivity,  of  his  organized  intellectual  occupation, 
in  government,  legislation,  courts,  codes, 
judges,  sheriffs,  jails,  and  gibbets,  has  been, 
and  is,  engaged  upon  the  question  of  “  the 
ought.”  And  whatever  the  theoretical  moral 
philosopher  may  elaborate  or  teach,  there  is  no 
doubt  in  the  literatures  of  man,  no  doubt  in 
the  moral  judging  activities  of  men,  no  doubt 
in  the  practical  decisions  of  men  about  their 
own  acts  or  the  acts  of  others,  that  there  is  an 
independent  morality  beyond  them,  a  law  out¬ 
side  themselves,  which  takes  no  account  of 
profit,  of  survival,  or  non-survival,  which  is 
self-contained,  autocratic,  final  ;  which,  when 
you  get  its  utterance,  gives  a  decision  from 
which,  by  men  or  gods,  there  is  no  appeal, 
for  duty  is  “  stern  daughter  of  the  voice  of 


2  So  essentially  living,  human,  overgrowing,  is  the  ethical  question, 
that  the  natural  philosopher,  as  we  see,  becomes  a  moralist.  A 
mechanical  student  discusses  the  question  of  duty,  a  merely  physical 
science  unconsciously  passes  over  into  moral  science  ;  and  Dr. 


HUGH  MILLER  THOMPSON. 


63 


Conscience  may  mistake  the  utterance,  as 
the  bodily  ear  may  mistake  a  word.  But  there 
is  an  eternal  “  I  ought,”  and  man  recognizes  its 
existence  instinctively,  and  confesses  that  it 
binds  supremely,  come  what  may. 

Thus  appealing  to  testimony  there  is  no  in¬ 
nate  conviction  so  universally  confessed  by  all 
tongues,  pens,  and  processes  of  life  as  that 
right  and  wrong  are  eternal,  and  that  man 
owes  himself  to  the  right. 

The  grandeur  and  the  nobleness  of  human 
character  stand,  by  universal  consent,  on  this 
loyalty.  The  iron  crown  of  duty  is  the  im¬ 
perial  crown  of  human  nature.  The  highest 
character  is  that  so  faithful  to  the  “  ought  ” 
that  all  one  has,  all  one  is,  estate,  honors, 
peace,  comfort,  name,  fame,  life  itself,  shall  be 
surrendered  rather  than  the  right  be  shamed. 
“  Integrity”  we  call  this  loyalty  to  righteous¬ 
ness,  and  testify,  by  the  word,  that  it  is  the 
wholeness  and  completeness  of  human  nature. 
In  our  ideal  of  true  manhood  we  demand  it  : 
that  all  shall  perish,  rather  than  that  right  and 

Huxley  in  his  lecture  on  “  The  Physical  Basis  of  Life,”  while  sneer¬ 
ing  at  all  the  metaphysical  and  ethical  philosophies,  as  well  as  at  all 
religions,  as  vain  and  useless,  proceeds  to  lay  down  an  ethical  science 
himself,  and  tell  mankind  what  they  “  ought  ”  to  do,  and  what  "  is 
their  plain  duty,”  with  all  the  authority  of  a  Scribe  or  Pharisee. 


64 


BEDELL  LECTURES. 


truth  shall  fail.  In  slavery,  in  bonds,  in  the 
dungeon,  in  disease  and  rags,  in  writhing  tor¬ 
ture,  no  man  is  ruined,  no  man  is  shamed  or 
lost,  who  stands  to  the  thing  that  is  just  and 
right.  He  keeps  his  “  integrity,”  his  whole¬ 
ness  of  manhood,  his  worth  and  virtue  as  a 
man,  while  loyal  to  righteousness. 

The  two  wonders  that  filled  the  soul  of 
Kant,  “  the  starry  heavens  above  and  the 
moral  law  within,”  were  each  to  him  real 
alike.  I  must  accept  the  universal  conviction 
that  they  are  alike  real  to  all  thinking  men — 
and  almost  alike  independent  of  one’s  self — in 
the  thinking. 

Now  this  moral  law  within,  this  moral  judg¬ 
ment  and  ethical  faculty  in  man,  call  it  what 
one  may,  has  never  been  satisfactorily  traced 
to  any  physical  origin,  notwithstanding  the 
strange  attempts  so  to  trace  it.  It  remains 
a  strange  portent  on  the  earth,  without  suffi¬ 
cient  cause,  an  unexplained,  and  I  think  the 
more  one  examines  it  an  unexplainable,  phe¬ 
nomenon,  by  any  process  of  what  calls  itself 
science. 

But  its  independence  of  the  world,  and  of 
all  the  world  holds,  is  boldly  assumed  and  as¬ 
serted,  by  its  deliberate  turning  about  upon 


HUGH  MILLER  THOMPSON.  65 

nature  and  demanding  that  nature  shall  answer 
to  it  for  its  character. 

I  have  cited  two  great  names  in  science,  in 
the  act  of  summoning  the  world  to  be  judged 
at  the  bar  of  human  conscience.  Mr.  Mill 
condemns  nature  as  cruel  and  inhuman.  But 
equally  St.  Paul,  though  with  a  larger  as  well 
as  wiser  and  more  hopeful  thought,  long  since 
declared  that  “  the  whole  creation  groans  and 
travails  together”  and  “the  creation  is  made 
subject  to  vanity.”  Mr.  Spencer,  compelled 
by  the  fatal  necessities  of  his  narrow  material¬ 
ism,  declares  nature  at  every  instant  to  be  ab¬ 
solutely  beneficent,  and  every  possible  act  of 
man  to  be  equally  good. 

St.  Paul  sees  the  evil  in  xiature  which  any 
man  can  see  who  does  not  shut  his  eyes,  but 
sees  also  the  meaning,  and  is  the  one  rational 
philosopher  of  the  three,  and  the  one  whose 
philosophy  is  that  of  progress,  genuine  evo¬ 
lution,  and  therefore  hope. 

Creation  is  at  the  bar  of  his  moral  judgment 
as  at  that  of  Mr.  Mill,  full  of  vanity  and  in¬ 
consequence,  full  of  pain  and  apparent  unrea¬ 
son,  and  in  bondage  and  corruption.  But  it 
waits.  The  years  are  moving  on.  The  sons 
of  God  are  revealing.  The  light  breaks  the 


66 


BEDELL  LECTURES. 


darkness.  The  world  is  imperfect.  But  it  is 
not  mad,  nor  bad,  nor  accursed,  nor  vile.  A 
good  world,  but  capable  of  being  made  far 
better,  is  St.  Paul’s  judgment.  Just  as  human 
nature  is  good  but  imperfect,  and  therefore  un¬ 
der  strain  of  toil  and  pain,  so  the  kosmos  in 
which  it  lives  is  good  but  imperfect,  laboring 
under  stress  and  strain  for  the  day  of  its 
perfection. 

Therefore  St.  Paul’s  moral  judgment  of  the 
nature  of  things  is  an  echo  far  down  the  centu- 
ries  of  the  voice  from  the  palm-tree  of  De¬ 
borah.  The  creature  is,  notwithstanding  all 
temporary  triumphs  of  evils,  all  successes  of 
wrong  and  injustice,  but  struggling  onward  to 
“  the  glorious  liberty.”  The  supreme  law  is 
good.  The  stars  in  their  courses  fight  against 
Sisera.  The  fight  is  bitter,  the  battle  sore, 
and  sometimes  long  time  doubtful,  and  many 
a  good  knight  of  God  is  trampled  down,  and 
many  a  white  banner  trailed  in  the  dust,  but 
there  can  be  but  one  end — the  unswerving 
stars,  the  awful  dim  powers  that  are  so  in¬ 
scrutable  to  science,  are  on  the  side  of  right, 
the  kosmos  is  moral  as  well  as  rational,  and 
though  right  be  on  the  scaffold  and  wrong  be 
on  the  throne, 


HUGH  MILLER  THOMPSON. 


67 


“  Yet  that  scaffold  sways  the  future, 

And  God  stands  within  the  shadow, 

Keeping  watch  upon  his  own.” 

And  now  which  of  these  views  best  answers 
to  the  facts  ?  Which  of  these  decisions  is  the 
most  “  scientific  ”  in  the  true  sense  of  that 
word  ? 

First  of  all  we  may  appeal  to  the  testimony 
of  mankind,  the  witness  of  their  universal  con¬ 
viction,  that  there  is  an  eternal  and  absolute 
right,  and  that  the  ordered  world  is  upon  its 
side,  under  whatever  stress  and  pain  ;  and  this 
conviction  is  just  the  clearest  and  most  per¬ 
sistent,  where  men  have  learned  most  about 
the  world  and  the  action  of  what  people  call 
nature’s  laws,  and  where  they  are  most  earn¬ 
estly  endeavoring  themselves  for  the  better¬ 
ment  of  men. 

The  savage  may  stand  in  terror  of  nature, 
as  revengeful,  unjust,  malignant,  or  evil  in 
some  of  its  powers.  We  have  no  such  terror. 
We  do  not  seek  to  placate  a  power  of  which 
the  more  we  know  the  more  we  know  it  is 
on  our  side.  Mr.  Spencer  declares  “  the  power 
that  lies  behind  phenomena”  inscrutable,  Mr. 
Matthew  Arnold  is  sure  that  this  inscruta¬ 
ble  power  “  makes  for  righteousness  ”  at  all 
events.  That  much  is  as  clear  to  the  dainty 


68 


BEDELL  LECTURES . 


English  scholar  as  it  was  to  the  wise  old 
Hebrew  seeress.  On  that  same  conviction 
we  are  all  acting,  we  who  think  or  speak  or 
work  for  the  good  of  men. 

There  is  no  progress  possible,  no  real  evolv¬ 
ing,  if  the  world  be  diabolic.  There  is  none,  if 
it  be  indifferent.  If  the  nature  of  things  be 
evil,  then  destruction  and  not  evolution  is  the 
only  hope.  If  it  be  indifferent,  why  should 
men  work  for  the  enlightenment  or  betterment 
of  men  in  a  kosmos  stupid  to  good  or  ill  ? 

Our  hands  and  tongues  are  paralyzed  for 
any  human,  reasonable,  or  beneficent  uses. 
We  are  men  without  good  in  the  present  and 
utterly  without  hope  in  the  future.  Swift 
sweeping  out  of  being  of  such  a  universe, 
would  be  the  only  thing  left  to  desire, — the 
only  cry  of  any  prayer. 

We  must  leave  unsolved  the  mystery  of  the 
struggle.  That  certainly  is  inscrutable.  The 
origin  of  evil  is  an  enigma  of  science.  Of 
science,  I  say,  because  evil  exists — that  is  a  fact 
known.  How  it  exists  and  why  it  exists  be¬ 
longs  to  science,  if  any  fact  belongs  to  it.  But 
its  beginning  is  as  inscrutable  as  all  beginnings. 
Certainly  the  evolution  hypothesis  does  not  ex¬ 
plain  the  fact  by  denying  it  or  ignoring  it. 


HUGH  MILLER  THOMPSON. 


69 


We  find  the  fact  and  accept  it  unexplained, 
though  if  we  should  clear  it  of  our  confusions 
it  would  be  well.  Pain,  suffering,  death  even, 
are  not  parts  of  the  evil  in  question.  The 
shallowest  of  all  points  of  view  of  the  nature 
or  meaning  of  evil,  is  that  of  the  Hedonist. 
Bitterest  pain,  sorest  sorrow,  anguish,  torment, 
and  death  do  not  touch  man’s  well-being,  nor 
are  they  his  real  terrors  when  he  is  a  man  and 
proposes  to  stay  one.  As  a  bright  writer  puts 
it :  “  The  pleasant,  little,  perpetual,  intellectual, 
and  scientific  tea-party  of  the  evolutionist’s  para¬ 
dise  is  not  much  loftier  than  Mohammed’s,  and 
would  become  in  time  something  of  a  dreary 
bore.” 

After  all,  if  we  grasped  the  idea  that  the 
essential  evil  for  a  man  lies  in  his  not  being  as 
much  of  a  man  as  he  ought  to  be ,  we  might  find 
the  problem  simplified  even  to  science. 

But  taking  the  fact  of  the  struggle  which  all 
men  see,  I  say  it  is  unexplainable  by  any  physi¬ 
cal  theories,  how  men  come  to  have  universally 
the  judgment  as  to  which  side  is  the  right  side, 
and  also  how  they  universally  decide  that  na¬ 
ture  is  on  that  side  and  works  with  them, 
fights  for  them,  and  for  it,  and  that  in  the  long 
run  both  they  and  it  will  be  victorious. 


yo  BEDELL  LECTURES. 

The  cruel,  sensual,  Midianitish  power  per¬ 
ished.  The  evil  Canaanitish  powers  one  by 
one  were  swept  away.  On  the  walls  of  Nine¬ 
veh  and  Babylon  were  written  the  same  judg¬ 
ment  and  the  same  condemnation.  One  by 
one  sure  ruin  comes  upon  the  strongest  and 
richest  of  the  great  unrighteous,  greedy,  sen¬ 
sual  powers.  The  heavens  condemn  them. 
The  earth  casts  them  out.  The  kingdoms  of 
righteousness  alone  stand,  and  stand  while 
they  stay  righteous.  The  ages  have  a  moral 
judgment,  and  pronounce  moral  sentences,  and 
the  sentences  are  somehow  executed.  Rome 
falls  ;  and  even  Gibbon  sees  that  the  causes 
of  the  fall  are  moral.  The  nature  of  things 
has  pronounced  judgment.  Jerusalem  perishes 
because  it  has  opposed  the  moral  law  of  nature, 
and  the  law  vindicates  itself.  So  continuous 
is  the  experience,  that  it  requires  no  gift  of 
prophecy  to  foretell  a  nation’s  ruin,  and  yet 
the  nation  may  be  strong  and  wise  and  pru¬ 
dent  in  all  things  but  righteousness.  Philo¬ 
sophic  history  fails  not  to  attribute  national 
ruin  to  national  wrong. 

In  the  long  run  and,  of  course,  in  an  imper¬ 
fect  world,  with  exceptions  that  prove  the  rule, 
it  is  with  families  and  individuals  as  with  na- 


HUGH  MILLER  THOMPSON . 


7 1 


tions.  In  the  ethical  realm  there  is,  as  in  the 
natural,  a  law  of  the  survival  of  the  fittest. 
Temporary  success  may  postpone,  but  does 
not  avert,  the  issue.  Fraud,  cruelty,  selfish¬ 
ness,  sensuality,  cowardice,  lying — do  these 
prosper  ?  Do  the  families  or  the  individuals 
that  trust  in  them  stand  in  this  world  ?  If 
you  can  pronounce  any  thing  a  law,  you  can 
pronounce  this  a  law  of  nature — that  they 
perish,  that  the  sins  of  the  fathers  are  visited 
upon  the  children,  and  that  nature  in  due  time 
spews  them  out.  A  wise  and  beneficent  law 
is  ever  working  to  exterminate  the  vile,  the 
cowardly,  the  bad. 

And  here,  and  by  no  means  in  Mr.  Darwin’s 
theory  of  the  descent  of  man,  do  I  find  expla¬ 
nation  of  the  existence  of  degraded  and  decay¬ 
ing  races.  They  are  not  types  of  the  primitive 
shape  and  state  of  men  at  all,  as  far  as  ascer¬ 
tained  facts  go  to  show.  They  are,  historically 
and  by  sure  paleontological  facts,  in  many 
cases  at  least,  merely  races  of  degraded  men 
perishing  by  the  working  of  a  righteous  law. 
The  American  Indian  was  found  living  on  the 
ruins  of  a  civilization  which  had  perished,  and 
so  rapidly  going  to  destruction  by  his  own 
vices,  that,  if  a  white  man  had  never  landed 


72 


BEDELL  LECTURES. 


here,  it  is  doubtful  whether  there  would  have 
been  many  more  Indians  in  the  country  than 
there  are  to-day.  This  decaying  and  degraded 
race  were  specimens  of  a  people  on  which  the 
beneficent,  eternal  law  was  working  ;  and  it  was 
rapidly  killing,  scalping,  and  burning  itself  off 
the  face  of  the  earth. 

In  many  groups  of  the  South  Sea  Islands 
the  facts  are  the  same.  The  Central  American 
tribes  were  living  on  the  ruins  of  a  forgotten 
civilization.  It  is  better  to  stand  by  facts  as 
they  are,  than  to  be  misled  by  the  romances  of 
Mr.  Cooper  about  the  Indians,  or  the  romance 
of  Mr.  Darwin  about  primitive  man.  The 
best  physiologists  tell  us  that  even  “  the 
Neanderthal  man,”  judging  by  his  skull,  had 
as  good  a  brain  as  the  average  Frenchman  ; 
and  if  the  Eskimos  be  survivals  of  the  mythi¬ 
cal  “  Miocene  men,”  they  have  survived  be¬ 
cause  of  many  most  admirable  traits,  which, 
Captain  Parry  emphatically  thought,  might  be 
well  imitated  by  Europeans.  They  are  far 
enough  from  Mr.  Darwin’s  imaginary  ape  who 
first  insisted  on  dispensing  with  his  tail. 

Nay,  it  is  not  development  of  the  tooth  and 
claw  of  brute  force  that  has  caused  survival  in 
this  world.  A  great  law,  working  steadily, 


HUGH  MILLER  THOMPSON. 


73 


has  been  forgotten.  Nature  has  had  a  moral 
quality  in  her.  Even  the  geological  records 
hand  in  their  testimony.  The  ravening  mon¬ 
sters  of  the  primal  slime  are  stranded  wrecks 
upon  the  shores  of  the  theoretic  geologic  ages. 
Armed  and  furnished  to  survive  by  destruction 
of  all  else,  nature  has  cast  them  out.  She  has 
ever  been  working  out  the  man,  while  ape  and 
tiger  die. 

He  was  no  Christian  who  sang  : 

“  Gentleness,  wisdom,  virtue,  and  endurance, 

These  are  the  seals  of  that  most  firm  assurance 
That  bars  the  pit  over  destruction’s  strength.” 

The  gentle  powers,  the  ordered,  sweetly 
reasonable,  and  kindly  gifts  of  humanity,  are 
the  strong  gifts  in  a  nation,  or  in  a  man.  It 
would  seem  as  if  nature  was  the  enemy,  when 
it  comes  to  him  at  least,  of  mere  force. 

“  God  is  on  the  side  of  the  heaviest  artillery,” 
was  the  notion  of  one,  than  whom  no  man 
blundered  worse  in  his  understanding  of  the 
world  and  nature.  Faith  in  force  and  destiny, 
that  was  all.  And  on  the  sea-washed  rock  of 
St.  Helena  his  faith  left  him  stranded,  because, 
as  Carlyle  would  say,  “  the  eternal  veracities 
were  against  his  lie.” 

A  materialistic  fatalism  which  has  no  place 


74 


BEDELL  LECTURES. 


for  morals — which  knows  no  right  and  no 
wrong,  is  working  itself  into  the  thought  of 
the  time.  It  will  work  itself  still  more  deeply 
as  time  passes.  Its  issue,  when  accepted  by 
any  people,  can  be,  if  there  be  any  thing  sure  in 
experience, — that  is  in  genuine  scientia — only 
ruin  soon  or  late.  Blind  pride  and  blind  trust 
in  mere  force  have  a  persistent  result. 

And  this  fatalism  challenges  for  itself  the 
name  of  science,  and  sets  itself  out  as  the 
one  true  thing.  If  it  be  so,  then  we  must 
accept  the  consequences.  No  matter  what  the 
fact  be  in  science,  we  must  face  the  fact.  The 
consequences  must  take  care  of  themselves. 

But  I  must  decline  to  call  it  science,  must 
decline  to  accept  it  because  it  does  not  explain 
all  the  facts  nor  satisfy  most  essential  condi¬ 
tions.  It  is  not  that  it  is  opposed  to  religion, 
or  needs  to  be  reconciled  with  religion.  It  is, 
that  it  requires  me  to  believe  the  unbelievable, 
and  accept  the  unthinkable,  results  without 
causes,  ends  without  purpose. 

A  creature  stamped  moral,  with  the  “  I 
ought  ”  uttering  itself  in  him,  in  some  dialect, 
wherever  found  ;  with  the  sense  of  duty  and 
right,  whatever  he  may  mean  by  them,  sov¬ 
ereign  over  his  nature  though  he  may  rebel  ; 


HUGH  MILLER  THOMPSON. 


75 


with  this  overbearing  moral  conviction  of  “  the 
thing  he  ought,”  in  the  best  types  of  the  race 
in  all  ages,  driving  him  to  endure  misery, 
hunger,  pain,  death,  binding  him  in  the  dun¬ 
geon,  chaining  him  to  the  stake,  sharpening 
the  axe  for  him  at  the  block ;  with  the  moral 
judgment  of  the  race  powerless  to  imitate  him 
in  its  millions,  still  by  its  millions  uttering 
itself  in  “Well  done!  this  becomes  a  man”; 
such  a  creature  comes  out,  I  am  asked  to 
believe,  from  the  blind  working  of  blind  matter, 
is  evolved  and  descended  from  mere  “  stoff”  ! 

Again,  this  being  has  the  living  conviction 
that  not  only  ought  he  to  be  righteous,  but 
that  whatever  claims  his  reverence  and  regard 
or  manly  fear  should  be  righteous  also  ;  that 
his  God,  if  he  have  a  god,  must  be  at  least  as 
good  as  a  good  man,  that  the  world  in  which 
he  lives  must  be  a  world  that  makes  for  right¬ 
eousness — shall  not  be  a  brutal  nor  a  devilish 
thing.  With  that  persistent  instinct  he  turns 
upon  the  world,  as  we  have  seen,  and  ques¬ 
tions  it  about  its  morals  and  its  meaning,  hesi¬ 
tates  not  to  measure  it  by  his  human  moral 
judgment,  and  condemn  it,  if  he  think  it  wrong, 
with  scorn  and  defiance.  And  I  am  asked  to 
believe  that  blind  force  and  blind  matter 


;6 


BEDELL  LECTURES. 


evolved  this  being,  who  insists  on  turning 
upon  them  and  judging  them  both  by  the 
moral  law  that  flames  within  him  !  Force 
binds  Prometheus  to  the  rock  of  matter,  but 
Prometheus  defies  them  both,  even  with  the 
vulture  at  his  liver, — defies  them,  and  holds  him¬ 
self  a  man.  The  old  myth  is  truer  to  the  fact 
than  the  new  science. 

So  I  am  driven,  as  the  vast  mass  of  men 
have  been  driven  in  all  ages,  and  as  the  high¬ 
est,  best,  and  wisest  have  been  glad  to  confess 
themselves  driven,  to  hold  the  kosmos,  with  all 
the  difficulties  of  the  case,  not  only  reasonable 
but  moral.  This,  at  all  events  :  no  matter  how 
inscrutable  the  power  behind  phenomena,  the 
facts  assure  me  that  He  is  righteous  and  works 
out  righteousness  in  its  time. 

So  only  can  I  account  for  any  moral  law  at 
all  in  man  ;  that  the  world  was  made  and  is 
sustained  by  a  moral  power  outside  man,  to 
which  the  moral  law  inside  answers  ;  that  here 
there  is  the  objective  law  to  answer  to  the  sub¬ 
jective  conviction  ;  that  the  “  I  ought”  in  man 
has  an  eternal  “  I  ought,”  which  is  beyond  cir¬ 
cumstance  and  beyond  time  ;  that  the  con¬ 
science  of  man  postulates  a  God  of  righteous¬ 


ness. 


HUGH  MILLER  THOMPSON. 


77 


So  I  and  my  kind,  in  this  blind  clash  of  force 
and  stuff  can  stand  secure.  It  is  no  blind  clash 
or  brute  whirl  of  iron  wheels,  but  a  world  roll¬ 
ing  daily  out  into  the  fairer  day — eternal  rea¬ 
son  working  hitherto,  and  eternal  right  evolv¬ 
ing  all  things  well,  crushing  as  it  rolls  the 
bestial  and  the  bad,  and  wheeling  into  triumph 
the  manly  and  the  good. 

And  we  can  work  and  we  can  suffer,  we  can 
fight  and,  if  need  be,  fall.  We  can  be  trampled 
under  the  iron  hoofs  of  force  and  triumphant 
wrong,  and  still,  with  sure  conviction,  turn 
dying  eyes  to  the  eternal  watching  stars,  and 
hear  the  cry  come  down  uttering  the  conviction 
of  saint  and  sage,  of  patriot  and  hero,  of  the 
deliverers  of  men  and  the  shepherds  of  the 
people,  in  the  hour  when  they  fought  and  fell 
or  conquered,  “  The  stars  in  their  courses 
fight  against  Sisera.” 


Part  VI.  of  Herbert  Spencer’s  “  Principles  of  Sociology,”  after  more 
than  three  years  since  the  issue  of  the  preceding  volume,  has  been 
published  under  the  title  “  Ecclesiastical  Institutions  ”  (D.  Appleton 
&  Co.).  It  discusses  the  origin  and  development  of  the  religious  idea, 
the  rise  of  a  priesthood,  with  its  civil  and  military  functions,  and  moral 
influences,  and  concludes  with  a  religious  retrospect  and  prospect.  Mr. 
Spencer  believes  that  with  the  transition  from  theism  to  agnosticism 
“  all  observances  implying  the  thought  of  propriation  maybe  expected 
to  lapse.”  But  there  will  still  remain  a  need  for  qualifying  the  prosaic 
form  of  life  with  observances  “tending  to  keep  alive  a  consciousness 


78 


BEDELL  LECTURES. 


of  the  relation  in  which  we  stand  to  the  Unknown  Cause.”  And  in 
future  evolved  intelligences  this  religious  feeling  will  grow  deeper  and 
broader.  To  the  man  of  the  future  “  there  will  remain  the  one  abso¬ 
lute  certainty  that  he  is  ever  in  presence  of  an  Infinite  and  Eternal 
Energy,  from  which  all  things  proceed.” 


1885. 


FOUNDER’S  DAY 

AT 


Gambier. 


FOUNDERS’  DAY 


ORDER  OF  SERVICE 

November  3,  1885, 

AS  ON 


THE  FESTIVAL  OF  ALL  SAINTS. 


OFFICIATING  PERSONS: 


The  Te  Deum  . 
Ante-Communion  .  .  j 

The  Epistle  j 

The  Gospel  | 

The  Creed 

Founders'  Memorial  .  j 

Doxology. 

Prayer  for  the  Institutions. 
Hymn  232  at  3D  Verse. 

Tpie  First  Lecture. 


.  .  Kenyon  College  Choir. 

Rt.  Rev.  Dr.  Knickerbocker, 
Bishop  of  Indiana. 

Rt.  Rev.  Dr.  Whitehead,  Bishop 
of  Pittsburgh, 

Rt.  Rev.  Dr.  Thompson,  Assistant 
Bishop  of  Mississippi. 

The  Bishop  of  Pittsburgh. 

Rt.  Rev.  Dr.  Bedell,  Bishop  of 
Ohio. 


\  Rt.  Rev.  Hugh  Miller  Thompson, 
\  D.D, 


Hymn  494. 

Offertory  for  Founders’  Scholarship. 
Matriculation  of  the  Theological  Seminary. 
Matriculation  of  Kenyon  College. 

The  Holy  Communion — The  Bishops  Present. 


81 


FOUNDERS’  DAY 


THE  SECOND  LECTURE. 


ORDER  OF  SERVICE 


AS  FOR  THK 


MEETING  OF  THE 

CENTRAL  CONVOCATION  OF  THE  DIOCESE. 


I  Rev.  Sherlock  A.  Bronson,  D.D., 
The  Litany  -j  Rector  of  Grace  Church,  Mans- 

(  field,  Ohio. 

Hymn. 

i  Rt.  Rev.  Hugh  Miller  Thompson, 
The  Second  Lecture  .  <  D.D.,  Assistant  Bishop  of  Mis- 

(  sissippi. 

(  Rt.  Rev.  David  Buel  Knicker- 
Benediction  .  .  .  -j  bocker,  D.D.,  Bishop  of  In- 

(  diana. 


82 


FOUNDERS’  DAY  AT  GAMBIER,  1883. 


We  remember  before  God  this  day  the  Founders  of 
these  Institutions  :  Philander  Chase,  the  first  Bishop 
of  Ohio,  clarum  et  venerabile  nomen,  whose  foresight,  zeal, 
unwearied  patience,  and  indomitable  energy  devised  these 
foundations,  and  established  them  temporarily  at  Worth¬ 
ington,  but  permanently  at  Gambier ;  he  was  the  Foun¬ 
der  of  the  Theological  Seminary,  Kenyon  College,  and  of 
the  Grammar  School  ; — Charles  Pettit  McIlvaine, 
the  second  Bishop  of  Ohio,  rightly  known  as  the  second 
Founder  of  these  Institutions,  whose  decision  of  charac¬ 
ter  and  self-devoted  labors  saved  them  at  two  distinct 
crises  of  difficulty  ;  he  builded  Bexley  Hall  for  the  use  of 
the  Theological  Seminary,  Ascension  Hall  for  the  use  of 
Kenyon  College,  Milnor  Hall  for  the  use  of  the  Grammar 
School,  and  he  completed  Rosse  Chapel  on  the  founda¬ 
tions  laid  by  Bishop  Chase. 

We  remember  before  God  this  day  pious  and  generous 
persons,  contributors,  whose  gifts  enabled  the  Bishops  of 
Ohio  to  lay  those  foundations,  and  who  are  therefore  to 
be  named  among  the  Founders.  We  make  mention  only 
of  those  who  have  departed  to  be  with  Christ,  and  now 
rest  in  Paradise. 


83 


84 


FOUNDERS'  DAY  AT  GAM  BIER. 


Among  the  many,  we  name  only  a  few  whose  gifts  are 
noticeable  because  of  the  influence  of  their  character  and 
position  : 

Henry  Clay,  whose  introduction  of  Bishop  Chase  to 
the  Admiral  Lord  Gambier,  of  England,  initiated  the 
movement  in  1823  ;  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury;  the 
Lord  Bishops  of  London,  Durham,  St.  Davids,  Chester, 
Lichfield ;  the  Deans  of  Canterbury  and  Salisbury ; 
Lords  Kenyon,  Gambier,  Bexley,  Sir  Thomas  Acland  ; 
Reverend  Edward  Bickersteth,  Henry  Hoare,  Marriott, 
Pratt,  William  Wilberforce,  Thomas  Wiggin,  Thomas 
Bates  ;  the  Dowager  Countess  of  Rosse,  who  aided 
liberally  the  Chapel  which  afterward  bore  her  name  ; 
Hannah  More,  who  also  bequeathed  a  Scholarship 
which  bears  her  name  ;  and  five  hundred  and  thirty 
others  whose  names  are  recorded  in  the  memorial  pre¬ 
pared  by  the  Rev.  Dr.  Bronson  at  the  order  of  the 
Trustees. 

We  remember  before  God  the  liberality  of  William 
Hogg,  from  whom  this  domain  was  purchased  under  the 
advice  of  Henry  B.  Curtis  and  Daniel  S.  Norton,  with  the 
consent  of  Henry  Clay  ;  the  grantor  contributing  one 
fourth  of  its  market  value. 

In  1838,  John  Quincy  Adams,  the  President  of  the 
United  States  ;  Mrs.  Sigourney  ;  Arthur  Tappan,  who 
originated  the  Milnor  Professorship  ;  St.  George’s 
Church,  New  York,  which  established  a  Scholarship  ; 
Rev.  Drs.  Milnor,  Tyng,  Bedell,  Sparrow,  Keith,  Rev.  I. 


FOUNDERS'  DAY  AT  GAM  BIER. 


85 


Morse,  Dudley  Chase,  Albert  Barnes,  John  Trimble, 
William  Jay,  Abbott  and  Amos  Lawrence,  Peter  Stuy- 
vesant,  Richard  Varick,  and  nine  hundred  and  ninety 
others  whose  names  are  recorded. 

These  were  the  first  Founders  of  these  Institutions. 

Among  those  who  aided  Bishop  Mcllvaine  we  men¬ 
tion  before  God  to-day, — in  1832,  Bishop  White,  Rev. 
Manton  Eastburn  and  the  Ascension  Church,  the  Rev. 
Dr.  Cutler  and  St.  Ann’s  Church,  Brooklyn,  the  Rev. 
Drs.  Muhlenberg  and  Wing,  Peter  A.  Jay,  James  Len¬ 
nox,  Robert  Minturn,  Henry  Codman,  Robert  Carter, 
Matthew  Clarkson,  Charles  Hoyt,  I.  N.  Whiting,  and 
four  hundred  and  sixty  others  whose  names  are  re¬ 
corded. 

And  in  1835,  in  England,  Daniel  Wilson,  Bishop  of 
Calcutta ;  the  Bishops  of  London,  Winchester,  Salis¬ 
bury,  and  Lichfield  ;  the  Duchess  of  Kent,  the  Duch¬ 
ess  of  Gloucester,  the  Princess  Augusta,  the  Duchess 
of  Beaufort,  the  Earl  of  Carnarvon,  Rev.  Thomas 
Hartwell  Horne,  Charles  Brydges,  John  Fox,  Jerram, 
Jowett,  Baptist  Noel,  Dr.  Plumtre,  Charles  Simeon, 
Henry  Thornton,  Sir  Thomas  Baring,  Henry  Roberts, 
architect,  who  gave  the  plan  and  working  model  for 
Bexley  Hall  ;  with  four  hundred  and  eighty-three  others 
whose  names  are  recorded. 

These  are  the  second  Founders  of  these  Institutions. 

We  mention  before  God  to-day  the  gifts  of  Bishop 
Gadsden,  Bishop  Johns,  Colonel  Pendleton,  John  Kil- 


86 


FOUNDERS'  DAY  AT  GAMBIER. 


gour,  the  Kinneys,  Dr.  Doddridge,  Charles  D.  Betts, 
who  founded  a  fund  for  the  purchase  of  theological 
books  ;  Rev.  C.  C.  Pinkney,  who  contributed  for  fit¬ 
ting  up  a  Laboratory ;  J.  D.  Wolfe,  who  contributed  to 
found  the  Lorillard  and  Wolfe  Professorships ;  John 
Johns,  M.D.,  of  Baltimore,  who  left  a  valuable  legacy 
to  the  Institutions  ;  Stewart  Brown,  William  H.  Aspin- 
wall,  and  others  who  contributed  to  the  building  of 
Ascension  Hall  ;  Thomas  H.  Powers,  Lewis  S.  Ashurst, 
John  Bohlen  and  sister,  and  others  who  founded 
a  Professorship  in  memory  of  the  late  Dr.  Bedell  of 
Philadelphia  ;  Mrs.  Spencer,  Mrs.  Lewis,  who  partly 
founded  a  Professorship,  Rev.  Dr.  Brooke  ;  Rev.  Messrs. 
Lounsberry  and  E.  A.  Strong,  whose  efforts  brought 
many  valuable  contributions  to  these  Institutions  ;  W. 
W.  Corcoran,  President  Andrews,  Rev.  Alfred  Blake, 
and  nine  hundred  and  forty  others  who  are  also  to 
be  counted  among  the  Founders  of  these  Institutions. 

And  last,  the  Philanthropist,  George  Peabody,  the 
intimate  friend  of  Bishop  Mcllvaine,  who,  in  token  of 
that  friendship  founded  a  Professorship  that  bears  his 
name. 

We  mention  before  God  to-day,  with  reasons  that  none 
can  better  appreciate  than  this  community,  which  mourns 
their  loss,  three  of  our  citizens,  recorded  among  the 
Founders  :  Rev.  Marcus  T.  C.  Wing,  D.D.,  who,  besides 
being  a  Professor  in  the  Theological  Seminary,  was  for 
thirty  years  financial  agent  and  book-keeper.  More  than 


FOUNDERS'  DAY  AT  GAMBIER. 


87 


7,000  acres  of  our  land  was  sold  by  him,  at  fair  profit, 
and  under  his  direction,  $100,000  economically  expended 
in  buildings  for  these  Institutions  ;  R.  S.  French,  who,  with 
the  assistance  of  friends  in  Gambier  and  Mount  Vernon, 
provided  the  full  set  of  nine  bells  and  the  clock,  and 
placed  them  in  the  tower,  with  power  to  ring  the  Canter¬ 
bury  chimes  :  Martinbro  White,  who  was  for  twenty  years 
Agent  and  Treasurer  of  these  Institutions,  a  man  of  sin¬ 
gular  probity  and  purity,  whose  character  and  work, 
whose  fidelity  to  his  trust,  whose  honesty  as  well  as 
honorable  dealing  during  difficult  times  when  these 
foundations  were  being  laid,  entitle  him  not  only  to  a 
place  in  our  grateful  recollection,  but  to  a  place  among 
the  chief  Founders  of  these  Institutions. 

Among  the  donors  who  are  living  we  mention  with 
gratitude  William  E.  Gladstone,  Member  of  Parlia¬ 
ment  (at  present  Prime-Minister),  Rev.  Canon  Carus,  and 
J.  Pye  Smith  ; — of  the  United  States,  Rev.  Drs.  Dyer 
and  Burr,  Professor  Francis  Wharton,  A.  H.  Moss,  M.  M. 
Granger,  John  Gardiner  ;  Rev.  Archibald  M.  Morrison, 
who  founded  the  Griswold  Professorship  ;  Peter  Neff,  Jr., 
who  gave  the  Telescope  and  Transit  Instrument  ;  the 
Rev.  Drs.  Muenscher  and  Bronson,  and  several  hundred 
others  whose  names  are  recorded. 

The  third  Bishop  of  Ohio,  with  the  aid  of  William  H. 
and  John  Aspinwall,  James  M.  Brown,  Samuel  D.  Bab¬ 
cock,  William  B.  Astor,  and  other  members  of  the  Ascen¬ 
sion  Church  of  New  York,  builded  the  Church  of  the 


88 


FOUNDERS'  DAY  AT  GAMBIER . 


Holy  Spirit  for  the  use  of  all  the  Institutions  ;  through 
him  Mrs.  Bowler  founded  the  Professorship  which  bears 
her  husband’s  name,  R.  B.  Bowler,  who  gave  a  philosophi¬ 
cal  apparatus,  and  who,  with  Larz  Anderson,  Henry  Pro- 
basco,  William  Proctor,  and  others,  founded  the  Mcll- 
vaine  Professorship  ;  Jay  Cooke  founded  the  Professor¬ 
ship  which  bears  his  father’s  name  ;  Frank  E.  Richmond 
founded  the  Hoffman  Library  Fund  ;  Stewart  Brown 
builded  the  tower  of  the  Church,  to  bear  the  name  of  his 
son,  Abbott  Brown.  By  the  same  Bishop  and  his  wife 
the  Organ  was  placed  in  the  Church  as  a  memorial  of  the 
second  Bishop  of  the  Diocese,  and  the  Episcopal  chair 
as  a  memorial  of  the  great  Founder;  members  of  the 
Church  in  Philadelphia  completed  the  endowment  of 
the  Bedell  Professorship,  among  them  chiefly  William 
Welsh,  John  Bohlen  and  his  sister,  and  Thomas  H.  Pow¬ 
ers,  who  also  left  a  Fund  in  the  hands  of  the  Vestry  of 
Christ  Church,  Germantown,  for  a  perpetual  supply  of 
specified  books  for  students  in  Bexley  Hall  ;  and  Robert 
H.  Ives  and  his  wife,  who  stated  that,  desiring  not  to 
trammel  the  Trustees,  they  placed  their  fund  in  the  Treas¬ 
ury  without  conditions. 

In  1875  the  Trustees  determined  to  found  a  “  Trustees’ 
Professorship,”  which  is  partially  completed. 

All  these,  and  seventy  others,  are  also  to  be  ^counted 
among  the  Founders. 

We  mention  with  gratitude  the  successful  efforts  of  the 
present  President  of  Kenyon  College  to  complete  the  en- 


FOUNDERS'  DAY  AT  GAM  BIER.  89 

dowments,  and  the  gifts  which  have  resulted  therefrom, 
namely,  from  R.  B.  Hayes,  President  of  the  United 
States,  Peter  Hadyen,  Dr.  I.  T.  Hobbs,  Rev.  William 
Horton,  Thomas  McCulloch,  Samuel  L.  Mather,  William 
J.  Boardman,  A.  C.  Armstrong,  H.  P.  Baldwin  ;  from 
John  W.  Andrews  a  donation  in  lands  for  the  founding 
of  Scholarships  in  memory  of  his  son  ;  from  Mrs.  Alfred 
Blake  donations  for  the  purpose  of  founding  a  Scholar¬ 
ship  to  bear  her  husband’s  name  ;  from  Columbus  De¬ 
lano  the  Hall  which  bears  his  name  ;  from  Mrs.  Ezra 
Bliss  a  Library  Building,  which  bears  the  name  of  “  Hub¬ 
bard  Hall,”  in  memory  of  her  brother;  and  from  Henry 
B.  Curtis  Scholarships  which  from  generation  to  genera¬ 
tion  will  foster  sound  learning.  These  also,  with  thirty 
others,  the  latest  givers  to  our  Institutions,  are  to  be 
counted  among  the  Founders. 

The  congi'egation  rising. 

For  all  these  generous  gifts  of  the  living,  and  for  the 
memory  of  the  dead  who  were  the  Founders  of  these 
Institutions,  we  give  hearty  thanks  to  God  this  day  ; 
ascribing  the  praise  of  their  benefactions  to  His  almighty 
grace,  and  the  glory  of  His  most  holy  Name,  who  is  the 
God  of  our  fathers  and  our  God,  the  Father,  the  Son, 
and  the  Holy  Ghost,  one  adorable  Trinity  for  ever 
and  ever.  Amen. 

prayer  for  the  institutions. 

O  God  the  Holy  Ghost,  fountain  of  all  wisdom,  source 
of  all  grace,  be  present  always,  we  beseech  Thee,  with 


90 


FOUNDERS'  DAY  AT  GAME IE R. 


these  Institutions  to  direct  and  bless.  Established  in  the 
faith  of  the  Gospel,  endowed  for  the  service  of  divine 
truth,  may  they  ever  rest  under  Thy  gracious  benediction. 
We  pray  Thee  to  use  them  for  the  glory  of  Christ  in  His 
Church,  and  to  make  them  pure  fountains  of  heavenly 
knowledge,  holy  principles,  and  godly  learning.  We  be¬ 
seech  Thee  to  give  to  those  who  teach  in  them  wisdom 
and  patience,  discreetness  and  zeal  for  God  ;  and  to  those 
who  are  taught,  aptness  to  learn,  docility,  submission 
without  servility,  and  manly  gentleness.  O  Holy  Spirit, 
make  these  Thy  servants  studious,  truthful,  pure,  obedient 
to  all  who  are  in  authority,  and  temperate  in  all  things  ; 
so  that,  by  Thy  grace,  the  same  mind  may  be  in  them 
which  was  in  Christ  Jesus  our  Lord,  and  their  character 
be  formed  in  his  holy  likeness.  Prosper  Thou,  O  Lord, 
the  work  of  our  hands  upon  us  !  Give  to  Thy  people  a 
liberal  heart  toward  these  Institutions.  May  the  memory 
of  those  whose  gifts  have  enriched  us  be  ever  precious  in 
our  sight,  as  it  is  blessed  of  God  !  And  may  the  good 
name  of  these  Institutions  be  handed  down  from  genera¬ 
tion  to  generation  for  the  comfort  of  Thy  Church,  and 
the  glory  of  Thy  Majesty,  Who  art,  with  the  Father  and 
the  Son,  the  One  God  whom  we  adore  for  ever  and  ever. 
Amen. 


FOUNDERS'  DAY  AT  G A  MEIER. 


9l 


THE  PRAYER  OF  LORD  BACON. 

ADAPTED  FOR  STUDENTS. 

To  Cxod  the  Father,  God  the  Word,  and  God  the  Holy- 
Spirit,  we  pour  forth  most  humble  and  hearty  supplica¬ 
tions  ;  that  He,  remembering  the  infirmities  of  our  minds, 
the  limits  of  our  knowledge,  and  the  pilgrimage  of  this 
our  life,  in  which  we  wear  out  days  few  and  evil,  would 
please  to  open  to  us  new  refreshments  out  of  the  fountain 
of  His  goodness  and  wisdom.  This  also  we  humbly  and 
earnestly  beg,  that  human  things  may  not  prejudice 
such  as  are  divine  ;  neither  that  from  the  unlocking  of  the 
gates  of  sense,  and  the  kindling  of  a  greater  natural  light, 
any  thing  of  incredulity  or  intellectual  night  may  arise 
in  our  minds  toward  divine  mysteries.  But  rather  that 
by  the  cleansing  of  them  through  the  study  of  truth,  and 
the  purging  them  from  fancy  and  vanities  by  the  entrance 
of  wisdom,  yet  subject  and  perfectly  given  up  to  the 
Divine  oracles,  there  may  be  given  unto  our  faith  the 
things  that  are  faith’s  ;  through  Him  whom  truly  to  know 
is  everlasting  life  ;  and  to  whom,  with  Thee  O  Father,  and 
Thee  enlightening  Spirit,  we  ascribe  glory  and  praise  world 
without  end.  Amen. 


Date  Due 

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IN  U.  S.  A. 

